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)