Book Review #325 - Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna #1) by Kendare Blake

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 Rating: 3/5

 

 

 

This was a book that has been sitting on my bookshelf for sometime. I had pretty high expectations for it, and it just didn't meet them at all.

 

 

First of all, it was nowhere near as creepy as I thought it was going to be. I didn't find it creepy at all. Someone who scares easily would probably love this book.

 

 

The characters were okay, but I felt like they were only half developed. Cas had some great one liners, but overall I didn't really care for him at all.

 

 

I really did like the idea of Cas hunting down ghosts and releasing them but felt like this could have been explored a lot deeper.

 

 

I didn't really like the whole witchcraft aspect to it. I felt like the book was going in a certain direction with ghosts,and then the witchcraft part took the story in a completely different direction.

 

 

The ending is the only reason why I am intending to pick up the sequel, as it was a decent cliff-hanger.