Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna, Book 1) (Anna Dressed in Blood Series, 1)
From Kendare Blake, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Three Dark Crowns, a beautiful and haunting ghost story
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. Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed in Blood is a 2011 Kirkus Best Teen Books of the Year title.One of NPR's Top 5 Young Adult Novels of 2011.
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Community Reviews
ACTUAL RATING: 3.5 STARS
I read this book because it was recommended to me by a good writer friend of mine. She said it was a different, unexpected sort of young adult romantic tale.
I wouldn't disagree with her. The story did seem to be really unique and intriguing. Here's a ghost killer(?)/hunter(?) dude who travels around slaying ghosts who have become, well, murderous. Sweet! I dig the idea, for sure. Anna is a ghost who was murdered herself, and I really wasn't all that sure a romance was going to work here. I mean, one living, one dead. Not undead like Buffy-status, but like, actually dead with no physical body. The author does seem to explain this away in some form (I guess the ghost can take on corporeal form?), and I don't know if I completely bought that, but I rolled with it.
While I enjoyed this book, I guess I didn't feel too impacted by it. I wasn't as invested as I'd hope to be. I did really like a lot of the secondary characters, in particular, the male witch (is that a wizard, technically?), and I liked the popular girl turned ghost hunter--a sort of Buffy-esque Cordelia Chase with (a lot) less bratty-ness. I was also really intrigued by the author's ability to make me feel for Anna and not hold her vicious acts against her.
I'm not in any rush to buy/read book 2, but I would probably pick it up sometime.
I read this book because it was recommended to me by a good writer friend of mine. She said it was a different, unexpected sort of young adult romantic tale.
I wouldn't disagree with her. The story did seem to be really unique and intriguing. Here's a ghost killer(?)/hunter(?) dude who travels around slaying ghosts who have become, well, murderous. Sweet! I dig the idea, for sure. Anna is a ghost who was murdered herself, and I really wasn't all that sure a romance was going to work here. I mean, one living, one dead. Not undead like Buffy-status, but like, actually dead with no physical body. The author does seem to explain this away in some form (I guess the ghost can take on corporeal form?), and I don't know if I completely bought that, but I rolled with it.
While I enjoyed this book, I guess I didn't feel too impacted by it. I wasn't as invested as I'd hope to be. I did really like a lot of the secondary characters, in particular, the male witch (is that a wizard, technically?), and I liked the popular girl turned ghost hunter--a sort of Buffy-esque Cordelia Chase with (a lot) less bratty-ness. I was also really intrigued by the author's ability to make me feel for Anna and not hold her vicious acts against her.
I'm not in any rush to buy/read book 2, but I would probably pick it up sometime.
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