Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Anna Dressed in Blood

Author:Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen
Date: August 30th, 2011
Series: Anna Dressed in Blood #1
Pages: 316
Genre: YA- Paranormal Romance, Horror
Source: Purchased @ Lemuria Books

From Goodreads:

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

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 athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky 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, 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's life.

I've had ridiculously good fortune in reading here lately. I haven't read a single thing I didn't like and pretty much everything I've read I've sorta loved. In fact, it's the slew of good books that I've happened upon that has taken me away from the blog. I've been reading like mad and I haven't wanted to stop long enough to talk about it. But I just HAVE to tell you about Anna.

I've been looking forward to this book for a good while. It's a YA, ghost/lurve story about a murderous dead girl and the ghostbuster who falls for her. Add a male main character to that mix and you have a whole handful of win. Take that all you sappy Romeo and Juliet wanna be star-crossed love stories! Cas is in love with a dead girl who kills people! And, AND it's dark, twisted, a little graphic and kind of (wee bit) scary. You're hooked already. I can see it.

Theseus Cassio Lowood is a ghost hunter. Urban legends, the kind told by giggling girls at slumber parts to see who cries first, had to have gotten started somewhere and if you trace the rumors back far enough you might find that they held more truth than you would ever be comfortable knowing. That's what Cas does. He tracks down the hook-handed ghost that supposedly got those silly horny teenagers who were making out in that abandoned barn, and kills it. The restless dead never know that they've died. They just keep repeating the events that lead up to their own untimely deaths by carrying them out on unsuspecting victims. Cas has followed in his father's footsteps and travels the world murdering the dead. When a lead brings him to Thunder Bay and an old abandoned house that has claimed an unknown number of victims, he meets an angry, powerful phantom that knows that she's dead....and she kicks his ass.

Isn't it romantic? No not really, but it's going to be and you'll be Team Dead Bloody Ghost Love before you know it.

I started this book one evening and spent the whole of the next day answering questions at work with "I want to go home and read my book." How are you today, Laura? "I want to go home and read my book." Is that patient breathing, Laura? "I want to go home and read my book." Nothing mattered but getting back to this book. There are so many cool, wonderful and horrible things that happen in this story that I couldn't stand to be away from it for a second. Blake is a unique, bold new voice in YA, who's not afraid to dirty paranormal romance up a bit. The story is twisted but never sick. I didn't lay awake dreading things that go bump in the night but after I got to know Anna, I kind of wished they did.

Sequel? Why yes, there will be one. Girl of Nightmares sometime in 2012. Want. Need.