Review: Anna Dressed in Blood

Title: Anna Dressed in Blood
Author: Kendare Blake
Series: Anna #1
Publisher: Tor Teen
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story...

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

So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder 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: move, 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, but now stained red and dripping 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.

And she, for whatever reason, spares his life.

My thoughts: 


As soon as I read the synopsis for this book way back when I knew I would eventually read it! If you read this blog regularly then you would know how much I love horror, haunted houses, Halloween and anything that’s scary! So I was naturally drawn to this book. Surprisingly, it took me a long time to finally get a copy but I did and I read it and it was amazing!

Cas is somewhat of a ghost hunter which was passed down to him from his father. He moved around, ridding the United States of some of the most horrific ghosts who have the tendency of killing people. When he arrives in this new town, he has every intention of putting down the ghost that has killed a few teenagers. But he discovers they have an unusual connection that gets in the way of his duties.

Anna doesn’t like to think about her death anymore than she likes to tell people about it. All anyone knows is that she went out to her school dance, never made it there and was never seen alive again. Now she haunts the house where she lived, killing anyone who ever enters it. I love this story because it turns out that she doesn’t want to kill anyone and it’s almost like something darker more powerful than her is controlling her sometimes. So it’s not your typical ghost killing people story. Is there a typical ghost killing people story?

I love Cas’s friends! He gets to know the school geek, loner guy while befriending the most popular girl in school. I like the contrast of all their personalities and they work together really well. I especially enjoyed the little side romance brewing between the nerdy guy and the popular girl!

Anna Dressed in Blood is so much more than just hunting down Anna and figuring out her story. The main overarching story is of the monster that killed his father and is now hunting Cas. This larger story is really going to help sustain the series and I think it’s going to be really great and interesting in the future books! I give Anna Dressed in Blood 4 hearts because even though it was really great I was hoping for a little more horror!