Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

HELLO "Waiting on" Wednesday Friends!

It's Grad Student here, kinda MIA since I am away on a research trip, trying to read as much as I possibly can about matters of 1920s and 1930s history (and not the glamorous flapper part, sadly.) But here is another combo book review.

So first let me give a shout out to the great/creepiness that is Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake. Cas moves from town to town tracking down murderous ghosts with his kitchen-witch mom and her cat. Cas can kill ghosts cause he inherited his fathers athame (note, the entire time I did not know what this was. its a kind of knife, but I wasn't inspired enough to google it, but the internet now tells me its a ceremonial /magic dagger). Following a lead, Cas heads to Canada (GASP THINGS ARE ALREADY GETTING WEIRD) to track down a ghost known as Anna Dressed in Blood (her dress is white, but when she gets angry/goes to kill you, it starts to saturate and drip blood. Yikes!). Since her murder over 50 years ago, she has killed every person to step inside her house. That is until Cas gets dumped there by the local high school's resident jerks. Cas lives to tell the tale, and discover that Anna is like no ghost he has ever met. Why? How will Cas kill her? And is Cas's past catching up with him?


Originality: 9-- the ghost stuff is cool and creepy and this book is a great change of pace because the narrator is a boy who is charming and sarcastic, knows what he is doing, and has ZERO complexes about his looks/abilities (so not a whispy thin girl who is pretty and clueless but magical -rejoice, gentle reader). I like Cas AND Anna, even though I am never not scared of her. I think that's a big feat.
Absurdity: 2. I bought this hook, line, and sinker (but I am still not going on any haunted house tours, Goosie Mama)
Level of Paranormal Romance: 5. The relationships are slow to grow (like the real world) but as the tagline of Blake's blog says, "Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story." So use your imagination.
Level of Harry-Potterness: solid 5. ghosts, mind-reading, and magic knives, oh my, but grounded in reality.

Moral of the story...READ THIS BOOK PEOPLE!...Which leads us to....