Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

BOOK STATS

Rating: ☆☆☆
Title: Anna Dressed in Blood
Author: Kendare Blake
Series: Anna #1
Genre: Horror
Audience: Young Adult
Format: Audiobook
Narrator: August Ross
Length: 9 hours (316 pages)
Publisher: Tor Teen; Sound Library
Release Date: October 17, 2011
Source: Library (Libby)
Recommended for fans of: Supernatural

SYNOPSIS

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. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: 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.

Yet she spares Cas’s life.

MY THOUGHTS

This is basically a YA version of Supernatural. If one of the Winchester brothers had the maturity and sense of humor of Percy Jackson, he would be Cas Lowood. However, the humor and the horror didn’t always mesh successfully for me.

This book started off strong. The hauntings were super creepy and horrific. I really enjoyed Cas’s new friendships and the role of witchcraft in this book. However, I thought the romance was unnecessary and detracted from the effectiveness of the supernatural horror.