Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna Dressed in Blood, #1)

by Kendare Blake

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 Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. On his travels he finds a girl entangled in curses and rage. She wears a dress, once white, now stained with dripping blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person she meets. And she, for whatever reason, spares Cas's life.

• ISBN10: 0606262520
• ISBN13: 9780606262521
• Publish Date: 3 July 2012 (first published 30 August 2011)
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 6 April 2021
• Publish Country: US
• Imprint: Turtleback Books
• Edition: Bound for Schools & Libraries ed.
• Format: Hardcover (Library Binding)
• Pages: 316
• Language: English

Reviews

[payton]

I didn't find anything in this book particularly spooky accept for the attic scene, which really wasn't scary but chilling. I want more of Morfran and the English lad, they both seem to be spectacular characters and I've hardly gotten a taste of them. The character development wasn't superb, in fact I think it was rather shabby and cheap, like a bad horror movie rip off.

If Soulprint had an amazing and simplistic YA writing style that felt like home then Anna Dressed in Blood was from a genre that made me feel at home, the paranormal genre.

This book is all about ghosts. Cas Lowood is a ghost hunter. He, his mother and his cat move to Thunderbay so that he can hunt the killer-ghost, Anna Korlov, known as Anna Dressed in Blood.

I'm one of those "scared of everything" people. That's why horror and I are a genre that don't get a long. Anna Dressed in Blood was not a novel that I found scary at all. It didn't make my hair curl on end, it didn't make goosebumps form on my skin, it didn't make me think of every bump in the night as a ghost and it definitely didn't stop me from sleeping peacefully at night. Anna Dressed in Blood is more gory and gross than creepy and I can handle gross! This book is more paranormal than horror. There are ghost, white witches, dark witches and some vodoo stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed this. Paranormal is a genre that I've been reading ever since I could read and it felt so welcoming to read a book with a paranormal feel after such a long time.

Cas Lowood, was a cool character to read about. He's a ghost hunter and as Carmel says later in the book, "Buffy the vampire slayer". Cas was portrayed as a typical arrogant know-it-all male. Usually, characters like Cas makes me want to rip them in half (yes, this a reference from the book), but Cas's arrogance and know-it-all, I'm-the-only-one-who-can-do-anything-important grew on me. Cas's life is full of creepy ghosts and he managed to make light of his situation several times. He is also lonely and gains an unlikely group of friends. These friends are Thomas, Carmel (the unstereotypical queen bee who I loved), Thomas's grandfather and Anna.

But while Cas is a cool character, it was Anna who stole the show. Anna is one of the strongest ghosts that Cas has ever faced. She has murdered 27 victims and she is one scary ghost girl. I loved the way that she was described. I loved the horror that she brought. I loved her snark and wittyness. I loved everything about Anna.

Unfortunately, there were a few things that I didn't quite enjoy. These are big issues in this book and it's why I pushed Anna Dressed in Blood a star down.

I commend the author for not going down the stereotypical Carmel-Cas root and her guts for taking the difficult storyline (that I couldn't even think of trying to solve), but the romance in the book grossed me out. Cas goes from wanting to kill Anna to wanting her to be "my Anna" and I felt that it was quite freaky for a murderous ghost to have a relationship with a breathing and living human being. Another reason that the romance made me disgusted was that it felt to abrupt. I was completely blindsided by a romance that started abruptly and I wasn't at all invested in Anna and Cas's romance. I didn't want to be.\

This book provides a lack of world-building and poor explanations for certain things. Why is Cas the only ghost hunter? Why does Anna not fight Cas? Why is Cas the only one to wield the athame (his father's knife). These were questions that continued to plague my mind and was certainly not answered.

I also felt as though the story ended too easily. There was rising action, but it didn't amount to anything I wanted there to be more action, more fighting, more of an imminent death. The ending felt like a rushed, unintense, cop-out and it was quite upsetting.

Anna Dressed in Blood is a gory, disturbing and gross ghost novel that I thoroughly enjoyed. It's filled with ghosts, witches, action and characters that I adored. Even although the romance, lack of world-building and questions were gross or non-existent and the ending felt like a messy cop-out, I enjoyed this book and I recommend it to all paranormal ghost-lovers out there!

"It's a funny thing about ghosts. They might have been normal, or relatively normal, when they were still breathing, but once they died they're your typical obsessives. They become fixated on what happened to them and trap themselves in the worst moment. Nothing else exists in their world except the edge of that knife, the feel of those hands around their throat." (Cas Lowood)

[Nessa Luna]

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

Okay, first of all I have to tell you that I was a bit disappointed with this book. I had hoped it would be a really creepy, scary story, that I would have to sleep with the lights on – as the text on the back of the book says – but it was actually not that scary. Honestly, I felt like I was reading an average YA novel, other than the fact that the main character was a boy and Anna (show spoiler)[(his love-interest)] (hide spoiler) a murderous ghost. Okay, there were some parts where I was freaking out, like the part where they first meet Anna, and a part somewhere close to the end of the book.

Even though it wasn’t really scary, I found it a nice book to read; the writing was good, and I really liked all the characters (apart from the ‘Trojan Army’ as Thomas called them). I liked Cas, I liked Anna, I liked Cas’ mum (and her cat), Thomas and his granddad, Carmel (though I kept on reading Caramel), yes they were good characters.

I found myself comparing this book to the show Supernatural a lot, because the first chapter of the book (in which Cas ‘kills’ the ghost of a hitchhiker) reminded me a bit of the first episode (it wasn’t completely the same, but it both included a hitchhiker (sort of) and a bridge). The fact that the main character’s name was Cas (I had hoped it would be Castiel, but alas), and the fact that he hunts and kills ghost for a living, like his dad used to do (you know, the family business), yeah, a bit like Supernatural. Not saying it’s a bad thing, in fact, it made me like the book a lot more!

Personally, I felt like the romance thing (show spoiler)[(between Cas and Anna in case that wasn’t obvious yet)] (hide spoiler) wasn’t really necessary, but that’s just because I am not really a big fan of romance (I like it, sometimes, and I do ‘ship’ people a lot, but sometimes I just wish that there weren’t that much (YA) romance novels in the world).

In the end, I found Anna Dressed In Blood a very good story, and I am certainly going to read the second book!

[Kelly]

4.5 Stars
http://divainpyjamas.blogspot.com.au/2013/08/anna-dressed-in-blood-by-kendare-blake.html
I love, love, loved Anna Dressed In Blood! It was creepy and gruesome in parts, but being a young adult release, you should be able to sleep at night... Perhaps with the light left on. The book is told from Cas's point of view, and he doesn't hold back. He swears, he tells is straight and doesn't sugar coat his words. He also has never had any friends or connected with anyone, having chased ghosts all over the country. For the first time, he finds himself longing to stay in Thunder Bay, with new friends Carmel, Thomas and 'his Anna'.

It's a romanticised ghost story, despite the blood and gore. It does venture into creepiness, when Cas not only shares a kiss with Anna, but confesses his love for her. It's beautifully written and I can't wait to read the next in the Anna series.

[inlibrisveritas]

Anna Dressed in Blood is like a young adult version of Supernatural, which is a show I absolutely adore. For those who watch the show think of this as being similar to the first season of Supernatural, where it was all about the creepy hauntings and just getting the job done.

Cas Lowood is a, for lack of better term, smart-ass with a unique job. He kills ghosts and his been on the move with his mom since his father was killed. He doesn’t shy away from the messy parts and he’s not the kind of person you would be proud to take home to mom, he’s a bit rough around the edges but he’s a good guy. He finds that he’s met his match in Anna, a particularity difficult and dangerous ghost haunting Thunder Bay. She’s brutal. I loved her character and I loved finding out about her life, which was an incredibly sad and tough story. Thomas is definitely the info guy in this situation. He isn’t quite cut out for the actual work but I loved that he was willing to help Cas out as much as he could even when it put him in danger.

I listened the audiobook and I really think some of the story benefited from having it read to me. The horror aspects probably wouldn’t have been as vivid to me if I had read it on my own, but having a guy read it to me in a creepy voice really made the difference. In fact it was perfect timing that a family of squirrels moved into my attic the day I finished this….so I was terrified to sleep because I had no clue what was moving around above me. I also think the relationship between Cas and Ann benefited from the reading. I wasn’t a fan of the direction it went in and I have a feeling that if I read it myself I would have gotten irritated with it, however listening to it didn’t really allow me to harp on it.

I’m really curious to see what Girl of Nightmares offers and how Cas deals with his new and deadly mission to find Anna again.

[littleread1]

I grew up reading R.L. Stine and Christopher Pike, so horror, in a mild sense, is where I got my reading start. I don't read much of it anymore, but when several friends raved about this book, I knew it was one I had to check out.

I don't read many books that have male main characters, but it was easy to imagine being a teenage boy (what does that say about my mental state?) with the way Blake wrote about Cas. He has had a unique up-bringing, in that his father, and now he kill ghosts. But can you kill something that is already dead? He struggles with this throughout the story. Especially once he meets Anna. Who has killed many people over the years. But for some (still unknown) reason she doesn't have to kill him. So he holds conversations with her. He becomes obsessed with her. He (apparently) falls in love with her.

What?! I loved this book, gave it 5/5 even, but still can't wrap my head around that. I have to take the whole love is unexplainable concept at face value in this one. Because honey, if you ever kill a bunch of people I will drop you so fast your head would spin. The only other thing I had a hard time grasping was the ghosts are corporeal. Anyone can touch them, see them. But only certain few can kill them. But honestly? I don't care. The story was so good, and unique, and original, and all the other words that describe books I love.

I felt for these characters, their joy was mine, their sorrow had me in tears ... and also a little creeped out since I stayed up until after midnight just to finish this book. Be warned, there is some blood and gore, but along with that are some heart-wrenching scenes that have you rooting for Anna and Cas, even though they are on opposite sides and their relationship should be impossible. It is easy for me to recommend this book. I have no doubt you will at least like it, if not love it.