Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
7:46 PM
Publisher: Tor Teen
ISBN13:9780765328656
Genre: YA Horror
Review by Phil
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.
Synopsis (Goodreads.com): 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:
I had seen this book in stores FOREVER, and for some reason never really felt the need to pick it up, but boy do I wish I had. This book was fantastic! The ghost-hunter storyline was very fresh and new, and something that to the YA world really needs.
ADIB is about a 17 year old boy named Theseus Cassio(aka Cas), a ghost hunter in the search of his hardest target yet, a girl named Anna who has murdered over 17 (or maybe it was 27?”) victims in the past few years. Cas has been training for the last three years to become the best ghost hunter he can be in order to avenge his fathers untimely death, and banish the ghost that killed him. Anna is his last stop before he travels back to Baton Rouge and finally banishes the ghost that killed his father, but things do not go as expected. Anna is unlike any ghost Cas has ever seen, she is strong, intelligent, and maybe even….caring? But how can that be? Cas is so confused and doesn’t really know what to do with Anna, he can’t defeat her because she is too strong, but he doesn’t really know if he wants to defeat her at all! With the help of his new friends Thomas and Carmel, Cas must decide whether or not to banish Anna and finally avenge his fathers death.
Blake’s idea of how to be a ghost hunter was really cool, you need to have the ghost hunting gene, which is passed down from generation to generation, making ghost hunters very rare. I thought this was really creative and original, and it also added a lot to Cas’ character because it showed how determined he was to make his ancestors proud.
Also I loved Anna’s backstory, it was tragic and sad and just PERFECT!!
Along with those two things the book as a whole was just really entertaining, I LOVED Blake’s writing style and literally could not be more excited to read Girl of Nightmares sometime this summer because I bet it is going to be AMAZING, also her new book Antigoddess comes out soon, and that will probably be amazing as well. I give Anna Dressed in Blood 4.75/5 stars!
♚♚♚♚♔
Posts
2 comments
I know what you mean - this book is everywhere! And I was so, SO close to buying it - when I realized it had a male protagonist. I don't even know why that keeps me from reading the book...I mean, male protagonists do work most of the time...After reading your review, though, I got a bit of a better sense of what this book is about. Still, I probably won't pick it up right away, but I do think I might like it :)
ReplyDeleteWell I definitely suggest picking it up soon, it is totally worth the money!! Also I am pretty sure it is on bookcloseouts.com for pretty cheap, but I could be wrong! So glad you liked the review and sorry it took so long to get back to you!-Phil
Delete