Reviewed by Nessa Luna on
Warning, this review might have some minor spoilers for the first book in the series!
After reading Anna Dressed in Blood, I was both curious and not curious at all for the sequel. I wouldn't have minded if the story had ended with the first book, because to me it was a very good ending. But the story didn't end there. No, there was Girl of Nightmares, the second and last book of this series, where apparently Cas was going to try to rescue Anna from wherever she got dragged into.
To be honest, I was quite reluctant to read this book, mainly because of the 'romance' in the first one. I mean, he falls in love with a ghost, seriously? I know I'm not the biggest romance fan, but this kind of felt weird to me. I liked the rest of the book enough to not give it two stars, but the romance just ruined it for me. Still, I was curious for the rest of the story, so I got Girl of Nightmare.
The first half of the book, I was annoyed at Cas' determination to get Anna out of Hell. The girl is dead, let her be dead. She may not be in peace, but there is nothing you can do about it. I felt frustrated every time he ignored his friends' advice, his mother's advice, basically everyone's advice. I wanted to grab him by the shoulders, shake him and tell him to let her go. But of course, Cas did not let her go. He spend most of the book wanting to get her out of Hell, and he actually risked his life a couple of times because of this, and it just made me really angry. Sure, I get it, he's in love with her - but she's a ghost, she's been dead for decades, and she's in Hell. There is a very small change they will ever get together again.
During the second half of the book, things started to get more exciting, and I started to read with more pleasure. Carmel started acting really odd, and the guys were planning on opening a door to Hell to get Anna out. Seriously, these guys have probably never seen a Supernatural episode. BAD IDEA, BAD IDEA! Anyway, we got introduced to a new character - Jestine, whose name just sounded really odd to me (I mean, Jestine and Carmel for an English and American girl - but Anna for a Finnish girl - I don't hate the names, but I just thought it was funny). I didn't like Jessy - I am going to call her that - at first, because she felt like a complete show-off at first, but she kind of grew on me in the end.
When I got to the last couple of chapters, I started to feel really anxious, because there were only about fifty pages left, and nothing had really happened yet. I got more and more stressed, the more I read on, and the ending actually left me a bit.. yeah, well, unsatisfied I guess? I don't know, I just didn't like the way it ended, and I had kind of hoped for more closure. In the end, I think the characters started to grow on me more than usual, I even started to like Cas a bit more, but yeah I want to know more about them. Maybe a novella, Ms Blake? That would be really nice.
In the end, I liked Girl of Nightmare, but I wouldn't really call it one of my favourite reads of this year. If you're into horror stories, like Miss Peregrine's, I recommend this series to you - unless you're totally not into weird romances.
My opinion of this book in one gif:
Reading updates
- Started reading
- 19 August, 2014: Finished reading
- 19 August, 2014: Reviewed