Anna Dressed In Blood Review

I'm currently away at BEA, so I thought I'd share some of my favorite reads so far this year that I haven't reviewed yet. 

Anna Dressed in Blood
by Kendare Blake
From 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.

My Thoughts:  This is what happens when I have too many books on my tbr shelves!  It takes me forever to get to the books I was once super excited about reading.  Which is a shame, because this is not the first awesome book that's gathered some dust on my (in this case, Kindle's) shelf.  I really need to stop putting certain books off.  Maybe I need to rate my tbr books by what stars I think they'll get, and tackle them that way... Hmmm..

So I loved this book.  It was like the awesomeness of Supernatural with only one hot ghost hunter dude so that I don't have to pick which hot guy to crush on (although it would be Dean.  Which is how, despite how he's described as looking, I pictured Cas.  Don't judge me.). And here be ghosts!

I loved how obsessed Cas became with Anna before he even met her.  How her image stayed with him, always at the top of his thoughts even when he was hanging out with the beautiful Queen Bee Carmel Jones. 

This book reminded me of good times I've had with friends and family, telling ghost stories, and how much I wish we still gathered around the campfire or living room table to scare the snot out of each other.  Lots of people grow up and move away from ghost stories, but readers like me never let go.

I realize  from the title that I should have realized that Anna was going to be of the violent ghost persuasion, but I was a bit unprepared for how bad ass she was.  Less than a quarter of the way through the book, she put me in my place by ripping a wrestler dude in half.  I was both sickened and just a wee bit impressed.  Skills like that could come in handy. 

I think part of the reason it took me so long to read Anna Dressed in Blood was that maybe I was afraid it wouldn't live up to it's title.  That maybe because it was YA it'd be all watered down like watching a horror movie on Lifetime, all the actually scariness and blood edited out, but it's not.  Anna is as fierce as her title. 

Should you read this book?  Hells, yeah!

Should you send me a copy of second book ARC?  Yes, immediately.  :)

It's Quote Time!

They have rationalized their fears away.  People shouldn't do that.

I'm no superhero.  If anything I'm Rorschach from Watchmen.  I'm Grendel. I'm the survivor in Silent Hill.

God, living people are irritating.

Anna Dressed In Blood gets a Midnight Book Rating of:

The cover gets a Midnight Book Cover Rating of: