Review: Anna Dressed in Blood

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake 

Publisher: Tor Teen
Publication Date: August 30th 2011
Pages: 316
Source: Library
Genre: Horror, Mild Romance
Goodreads

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

Anna Dressed in Blood is only the second Horror book I have read since I started blogging and  I really liked this book. Personally, horror books really don't scare me, but I do like how different they are from other books out there. Anna Dressed in blood is the story of Cas, a ghost hunter who gets a hint about a ghost named Anna who haunts her childhood home and kills anyone who comes inside of it. When he goes to hunt down Anna for the first time in his life he really gets to know a ghost and becomes friends with Anna, but one the biggest question remains, why didn't Anna kill him?

One of my favorite things about this entire book was the fact that it was told in a male point of view. There are way to many books told in female points of view these days and Cas has such an interesting life. I really liked that it was told from his point of view.

The ghost Cas is hunting, Anna has a very major part in the book as well. At the beginning of the book she really was a scary character, and a lot of the time she seemed to have either a very harsh personality or a pleasant personality when she was alone with Cas. By the end of the book she really was able to grow as a character, though not it a way that normal characters would.

Anna Dressed in  Blood was built up really well. I really liked how the story begins with Cas only beginning to think about going to get Anna and how it builds up to him finally getting to Thunder Bay (where she is) and slowly learning about her before he finally  meets her and learns her side of the story.

 A really random thing I liked about this book was the text, the text was a red tinged brown like dried blood, but it was still dark enough to be easy to read.

The only thing I wish they had done differently was the fact that they have a sequel that recently came out. This book would be just fine without a second book, and I don't think I will read the sequel.