Anna Dressed in Blood [Review]

4.5 stars for this one!

Stats: 
369 pages [Kindle]
Published 30 August 2011
ASIN: B004V9O52U
Amazon//Barnes&Noble


Synopsis:
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:

Cas is a teenage ghost hunter. Think Buffy, but with ghosts instead of vampires. He is following in the footsteps of his deceased father, who was also a ghost hunter and died on the job mysteriously. With his mom and his mom's neurotic cat Tybalt, they move from town to town wherever there is a murderous ghost wreaking havoc. Cas uses his dad's asthame (a ceremonial dagger) to send these homicidal ghosts away from our world. Cas gets a tip off for his most dangerous hunt ever: Anna Korlov in Thunder Bay, Ontario. She is called Anna Dressed in Blood - her throat was slit on her way to a prom and when they found her body, her white dress was covered in her blood. Anna kills anyone who enters her house - dismembers their bodies.

I have never read a "ghost story" before and to be honest, when I started out, I had completely forgotten the synopsis and didn't know that's what I was getting myself into. Blake does a good job of making the story CREEPY! I legitimately didn't want to leave my bedroom because it was dark out in the rest of the house. The story took a much different turn than I expected when Cas first got to Thunder Bay. Even when I thought I had everything figured out, it still took another turn than expected. I really liked this one and I'm excited for the sequel.
 

Previous Review:
The Death Cure by James Dashner {here}

[Counts toward my TBR Pile challenge: here] 

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