Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Synopsis:
Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story. . .

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, but now stained red and dripping blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

And she, for whatever reason, spares his life.

Publication Date: August 30, 2011
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Source: My own Tower of books :)


Review:

Anna Dressed in Blood is creepy and great. That pretty much sums it up for me :) I've seen some reviews that it wasn't as scary as some people thought it would be, but I don't think it's meant to be a Horror novel. AND I can say in all confidence that if you are up reading in your dark, quiet house at 12:25am . . . it's pretty eff-ing creepy. On to Cas. He's the ghost-killing hero in this book. He has some swoon-worthy moments throughout, but it wouldn't fit into the whole plot of h...moreAnna Dressed in Blood is creepy and great. That pretty much sums it up for me :) I've seen some reviews that it wasn't as scary as some people thought it would be, but I don't think it's meant to be a Horror novel. AND I can say in all confidence that if you are up reading in your dark, quiet house at 12:25am . . . it's pretty eff-ing creepy. On to Cas. He's the ghost-killing hero in this book. He has some swoon-worthy moments throughout, but it wouldn't fit into the whole plot of him having to kill Anna if he was all professing his undying (no pun intended) love for her the whole time. He's actually very conflicted because his life's purpose is to kill unruly ghosts . . . and seeing as Anna is highly murderous and rips people to shreds, he needs to get rid of her. Believe it or not their budding feelings for each other are pretty sweet :) All the other characters in the book serve a purpose and hold their weight in the story. I really liked bumbling, nerdy Thomas and wished there was a little more of him in the story. Preppy and popular Carmel is pretty good too, but she took a little longer to grow on me as she became more involved in the strange goings-on of Cas and Thomas. I've been meaning to read this one for awhile now, and I think it's one of the most unique ghosty-creepy-romancey stories that I've read. Oh! And I should mention that the words in the book are actually printed in a deep, maroon red. Just that one detail adds a little something to the experience of reading this one.