Anna Dressed In Blood: A Review

Anna Dressed In Blood by  Kendare Blake
 
When Was It Released?:  30th August 2011
Where Did I Get It From?: As part of a blog tour at Jen Big Heart's Blog
Who Published It?: Tor Teen 
Number Of Pages: 316 Pages

Ever since I first saw the cover of Anna Dressed In Blood I was captivated and dieing to get my hands on a copy. Anna Dressed In Blood is one of those books that I just kept seeing everywhere and I was unable to stop thinking about it until I had read it. With Halloween just around the corner I thought this would be the perfect scary read to get me in the mood. I was a little worried that because I was so excited for this book that once I started reading I would be disappointed. Let me tell you I was anything but disappointed.

Cas kills the dead. As did his father, before he was murdered by a ghost. Now he travels around the country with his father’s deadly athame hunting down and killing ghosts who murder the living. When Cas receives details of a ghost named Anna Dressed In Blood he thinks she will be no different from all the others. Anna kills everyone who enters her home and still wears the same white dress she wore on the night of her death dripping with blood. For some reason though she ends up sparing Cas his life.

While I love a little horror in my life a lot of time when I watch a scary movie I usually just end up hiding behind a cushion scared beyond belief. With books, however I’m more about to deal with the horror and gruesome aspects involved. I’m not sure exactly why, maybe it’s because with a book I can interpret details and descriptions in my own way. With Anna Dressed In Blood I felt that the scare factor was just right. Now don’t get me wrong, there are plenty of gory moments but with the action and the fast pace of the story I felt the horror was easier to deal with. There were no over the top gruesome moments, just enough vivid descriptions to have me on the edge of my seat completely intrigued and wanting to know what happens next. The pace is also just right, while it is fast and had me turning the pages, desperate to continue with the story, I was still able to take in all the details along the way.

What really got me the most with Anna Dressed In Blood was the way in which the story is not completely evil. While Anna is the ghost and villain, the story is more complex than that with Anna also being a form of victim too. I loved how this made the novel anything but your average scary ghost book. It added extra depth and really made me think about who Anna really was. I thought I had her figured out and then she would do something that would completely throw me off track. The interaction between Anna and Cas is also very unexpected and really interesting to read about. Each of the characters is unique and interesting in their own way. I loved the way in which a group of people who would never usually spend time in each others presence are thrown together and the dynamic works beautifully. The humour brought in with the use of the Ghostbusters term being used by the characters was also really refreshing and added a light break in the otherwise intense story.

My only issue with Anna Dressed in Blood was that while it was beautifully written, it is still a horror story, which has never been one of my favourite genres. The only reason I could not rate this book anymore than a four star is purely down to personal tastes and nothing more than that. Trying to come up with any other reason is just impossible, because quite frankly I have no other downsides.

Overall Anna Dressed In Blood is intense, scary, gruesome, funny and beautifully written, If you are looking for a scary read with depth that will have you hooked then this is defiantly the book for you. I recently find out there with another book in this series, titled Girl Of Nightmares and I cannot wait to read it. I just wish I didn’t have to wait until next year to read it!