Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendre Blake

Anna Dressed in Blood

by Kendre Blake

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 dagger, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local folklore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead - keeping annoying 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: track, hunt, and 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. But she, for whatever reason, spares Cas' life.

Reviewed by boghunden on

3 of 5 stars

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Without knowing too much about this book, I was expecting one of these two things:
1) Cas would fall in love with Anna
2) Cas would try to kill Anna.
After reading 160 pages, none of the two had happened. In fact, nothing had happened yet! I was close to DNF it, but for some reason, I kept reading. I'm glad I did, because the second half of the book was okay. I just think it's unfortunate that you have to wait that long for something to actually happen. Especially because I got that Supernatural (show) feeling after reading the first few pages. This book really reminded me of one of the episodes, and of course, that raised my expectations.

The writing was like any other YA book. At some places, it worked really well, and in other pages, it was quite disturbing. I'd have liked to see more of the good writing in the last half of the book, when the actual action kicks in. That would've made it even better. Unfortunately, this made the book somewhat of a boring experience.

I haven't really read any ghost stories before, but this book helped me realize that maybe I should. It could've been more dark, I think, because it didn't really give me that creepy ghost story-feeling.

This was somewhat of a mixed experience, but it could be due to the reading slump I'm currently finding myself in. Unfortunately, this wasn't the book to get me out of my slump.

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Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 5 November, 2013: Finished reading
  • 5 November, 2013: Reviewed