Book Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Let me start off by saying that I am a MASSIVE Supernatural fan. I absolutely love love LOVE the Winchesters (well, Dean more than Sam, but anyway...) so when I heard about Anna Dressed in Blood, a story about a teen ghost hunter who moves around America to send the dead back to where they belong, I knew I simply had to read it!

Cas Lowood is no ordinary teenager – he hunts ghosts for a living, a gift he inherited from his late father. Cas moves around America with his mother to send the dead back to where they can rest in peace. When he hears about the famous Anna Dressed in Blood, he knows he'll have to hunt this particularly murderous ghost down too – but what he doesn't expect is to fall in love with the terrifying being that murders everyone who enters her home. Cas is in a race against time, not only to uncover the tragic circumstances that surround Anna's death, but also to find out who (or what) murdered his father, and why they're now after him...

Anna Dressed in Blood starts off well – we met Cas as he's winding up a case before he and his mother move to a new town on the other side of the country. The descriptions in this book were at times, frankly, terrifying. When we first met Anna, I could imagine every detail of her perfectly – something which didn't help me to sleep, I can tell you! The other ghosts and ghouls in this book were no less scary – especially the spirit that pops up near the end. Kendare Blake has a great, punchy, to-the-point writing style which fits this fast-moving story perfectly.

However, although I wanted to find out what happened to Anna, I found the book getting a bit...repetitive towards the end. While the descriptions in the book were great, I didn't think Cas sounded like a teenage boy – Kendare did a good job (way better than the protagonist in Beautiful Creatures at any rate!) but there were times, especially when Cas suffers from the dreadful insta-love disease, that he sounded more like a teenage girl writing in her diary than a bad-ass ghost hunter. I did like the twist of him falling for the ghost though, rather than the typical beautiful ex-cheerleader who befriends him (and yes, that really does happen).

Overall though, I really did enjoy this book. The plot was pretty tight, the writing was good, and the characters all had their own distinct voices. When we find out what happened to Anna, I couldn't help but feel sorry for her, and the ending had me feverishly flipping through the pages to see what happened next. I'll definitely be picking up the sequel, Girl of Nightmares, soon.

Final comments: A good, solid book that's a must read for any fellow Supernatural fans!

4/5 cupcakes