SBB Review: Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

Synopsis:
It's been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can't move on.
His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live--not walk around half dead. He knows they're right, but in Cas's eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.
Now he's seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he's asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong...these aren't just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.
Cas doesn't know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn't deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it's time for him to return the favor.


Publication Date: August 7, 2012
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance, Horror
Source: Thanks so much to Southern Book Bloggers for letting me be a part of this tour!


Review:
Girl of Nightmares more than lived up to what I had expected and hoped for from this book.  Somehow I had forgotten in between reading Anna Dressed in Blood and this book that besides being amazingly well-written and interesting...it's also effing scary :) I'll admit to being a huge chicken-faced wimp, so maybe creepy or unsettling would be better words to use. I'll let you decide that for yourselves.

I was reminded right from the start how genuinely great Cas's voice is in this book. My sister at The Elliott Review was the one that insisted that I read this book because it was awesome. One of the things she loved most was Cas as the first-person narrator.  She said he was her favorite male narrator in a book, ever. And I have to say that I 100% agree. He's such a thinking, serious type of person but it's blended perfectly with his snarky, smart-ass mouth. Add in the fact that he is in love with a dead ex-murderer girl that could rip his face off...and you get come to understand just how complex of a guy he really is. When it comes to Anna though, there are no complex issues for him to work out. He loves her and wants what's best for her, and he'll do whatever it takes for that to happen.

Now the first we see of Anna in this book is seriously messed up and creeptastic. If you are really aiming to make this a scary read make sure you are reading it at night because the parts with her in them are very unsettling. And I loved it :)

The story continues seamlessly from Anna Dressed in Blood.  Some second books have a slow start picking up where they left off, but even if it's been awhile since you've read the first one it will all come back to you in this book.  This one is another page-turner and you'll want to punch your clock when it tells you it's too late and you should go to sleep instead of finishing your book.