Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Review of Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake.

Release date: August 30th, 2011.
Format: Hardcover, 316 pages.
Publisher: Tor Teen.
Source: Gifted.

Summery 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.

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This book. The Feels.  Anna.  

Anna Dressed in Blood opens while Cas is on a hunt, a poor ghost trying to get to the girl he'll never see again. Right from the start, it hooked me. Cas was funny and broody and badass. And Anna. Anna is the badass. I love Kendare's description of Anna, especially when we first met her. It was frightening and beautiful. She was frightening and beautiful. But also tragic. Her murder, and her horrible mother. I really hope her mother hatred is explained a little more in Girl of Nightmares. 

But something that really annoyed me was Gideon and Cas's mother trying to keep Cas from knowing anything about his father murder. I didn't like the way he had to hide the research he was doing. Also, Will. Will was a complete,ahem, ding-dong. I really,really disliked Will. And he was  really the only one that missed Mike, which I found funny. The way Mike's disappearance  was just swept under the rug was a little disconcerting, but not entirely surprising. 


Anyway, I'm still a little overwhelmed with that ending. 


Rating: 4 1/2 stars.

-Jodie