Anna Dressed in Blood(Anna #1) by Kendare Blake

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/Review:

I just love the characters of Cas and Anna, and really, really can't wait for the second book, so I can devour it too. Cas was kind of cocky, and a little full of himself, (of course) but he was very focused on what he was going to do, and he usually knew when he had screwed up. Anna was freaking amazing. I am not just saying that. She was. She had this problem of trying to kill anyone that entered her house, and for whatever reason, she tried really, really hard not to kill Cas.

The story moved really fast, and I didn't want to put the book down at all. Sometimes I just feel this overwhelming need to put a book down for whatever reason, but I usually soldier on, and the book comes out with a two or three star rating because of it. I can honestly say that this book was very surprising, and very interesting. Voodoo is not a subject that we regularly deal with in YA fiction. Don't know why, but if I had to guess, I would say it's because it's a hard subject to write on. I loved how this book had so many twists and turns, and never, not once, did I feel the need to run screaming into the night.

Another element that was interesting, was the early death of someone Cas meets, and my thoughts that Cas and Will might become friends. I am obviously biased against characters named Will. I expect them all to either be sweethearts, or bad-asses. They usually are, in my defense. So, all in all, I absolutely, positively, loved it. And hope that the sequel comes out soon. I haven't checked yet. :)

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Favorite Quote:Because I am going to get Anna, no matter what she thinks. Both because I've never failed before, and also because in the moment she told me she couldn't let me kill her, she sounded like she sort of wished she could. Her awareness makes her special in more ways than one. Unlike the others, Anna regrets.