REVIEW: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Anna Dressed in Blood

Kendare Blake

320 pages

Publisher: TOR Teen

Release Date: August 30th, 2011

Source: ARC from Publisher


  

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered 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: track, 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, now stained red and dripping with 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.

But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.

   Cas kills the dead. That sentence pretty much somes up the reason why this book is awesome. Because well, how can a seventeen year old kill what's already dead?

   Ever since his father's death, Cas has been hunting ghosts and putting them back where they belong with his father's mysterious athame, which gives our main character some powers, as he likes to say. Anna Dressed in Blood is the latest tip he's received. So he and his mom hit the road with their sights set on Thunder Bay way over in Canada, where Anna lives.

   Things with Anna don't go so easily. Anna's a monster, a horrifying creature that kills more than Cas has ever heard. But she doesn't kill him for some reason.

   Anna Dressed in Blood was pretty much like nothing I've read before. I loved Cas, short for Theseus Cassio, from the very start. I have to say, he sort of reminded me a little of Cassel Sharp from Holly Black's White Cat (and no, it is not because their names are similar).

   Though I'm not a fan of the f-bomb being dropped in books, it was very subtle in Kendare Blake's latest. It didn't get in the way of my enjoyment of the story at all.

   I thoroughly enjoyed Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed in Blood. The characters were all fleshed out, the writing was very seventeen-year-old-boy typical, and the plot was fantastically unique. So if you're snooping around for the perfect, creepy read, Anna Dressed in Blood may be just the right thing for you.

The cover depicts Anna just how I pictured her in the book,
from her writhing hair to her house lurking in the background.

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