Review: Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake. First Book In The Ghostly Reading Challenge

My first book in the Ghostly Reading Challenge 2012 is Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake! I absolutely loved reading this book!










Title: Anna Dressed In Blood
Author: Kendare Blake
Series: Book One of Two in the Anna Series
Published By: Tor Teen (Aug. 30, 2011)
Genre: YA Paranormal
My Rating: 4.5 Stars

Goodreads Review:

 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.

My Review:

  Anna Dressed in Blood happens to be my first read for the Ghostly Reading Challenge I choose to take part in this year.

I am not going to lie, I wanted to read this book since I first saw the synopsis on goodreads months before it even came out and was excited to read it but then, well some of the reviews for it made me pause.

I wasn't really expecting this to be too scary or bloody or any other negative things that I started reading in the reviews.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good mystery and I really do love reading about ghosts but bloody things and gore? Not so much.

Which is probably why it has taken me this long to finally stop being a chicken and pick up this book and read it.

Which I noticed first about this book? I will be honest, it wasn't the violence but more the language. I mean this is a YA book, I wasn't expecting to have already read two f bombs in the course of two chapters. But I am pretty open minded so it didn't stop me from reading further, well that and the fact that the storyline pretty much captured my attention, I think the fact too that, thanks to the many reviews I read, I wasn't expecting any real romance of sorts, really helped me keep an open mind and just enjoy the story.

It is a pretty unique storyline and I like the fact that this story is told through the eyes of Cas, a boy who hunts done the dead who are not exactly dead. A ghost hunter.

Lets face it, there really aren't that many paranormal stories out there right now with the main character being male some of the ones that are out, well, I don't care for them much. But I really liked Cas' voice and his dry sarcastic sense of humor throughout the story.

And I can't help it but I love Anna to. Is that strange of me to say? I really hope not because then I don't know what that says about me but truly, I loved her character. Her struggle to not be bad and to do good and I loved the good Anna that was inside of the Anna Dressed in Blood.

The underlying almost sneaky mystery that involved Cas and his father was also very well done. You knew something was going on but it was easy to be distracted by Anna's story to not always notice all the hints the author left for us.

I really loved Thomas and Carmel in this story too, such great side characters that really come to life as the story progresses.

Carey did a beautiful job with this book. It is so unique and intriguing and imaginative. I truly enjoyed it, gore and all.