Anna Dressed in Blood
Anna, Book #1
By Kendare Blake
ISBN# 9780765328656
Author’s Website: http://www.kendareblake.com/
Brought to you by OBS reviewer Heidi
Seventeen year old Cas Lowood has taken up an odd profession, traveling place to place with his Wiccan mother, so he can kill ghosts. It was a job passed down from his dad when one evil ghost got the better of him and killed him. Cas took up his dad’s magical athame and has been killing ghosts since. He always planned to go back and kill the spook that killed his dad, but he never expected that ghost to come to get him first.
Cas and his mom have come to the town of Thunder Bay so he can kill a ghost that has been brutally killing anyone that steps into her house. Anna Dressed in Blood as she’s known by the locals was killed when she was a teenager on her way home from a school dance. Cas expects her to be an easy kill until he is knocked out by some of his new classmates and thrown into her house. Anna kills one of the other boys there (after pulling him into the house) but doesn’t touch Cas even though she knows why he’s there. It appears that Anna can’t kill him and they don’t now why. However, she’s too powerful for Cas to kill and he can’t figure out why he can’t finish the deed. So with the help of some friends Cas tries to figure out how to kill Anna, but soon realizes that he doesn’t want to. But how can he save her when an even more sinister ghost wants her dead?
Honestly, I’m not a big YA (Young Adult) fan so I wasn’t really expecting much from this book, despite the intriguing synopsis. But once I started reading this book, I discovered that I liked it a lot better than I thought I would. I really enjoyed Cas and his humor.
“He went crazy over Greek mythology, which is where I got my name.
They compromised on it, because my mom loved Shakespeare, and I ended up called Theseus Cassio. Theseus for the slayer of the Minotaur, and Cassio for Othello’s doomed lieutenant. I think it sounds straight-up stupid. Theseus Cassio Lowood. Everyone just calls me Cas. I suppose I should be glad–my dad also loved Norse mythology, so I might have wound up being called Thor, which would have been basically unbearable.”
I don’t read many books with a male point of view so it was a nice change. There were plenty of pop culture references throughout if you like that kind of thing, but I found the romance to be nearly non-existence.
I found the book did kind of start to drag a bit toward the middle and the ending had much to be desired. It didn’t end with the happily ever after you would expect, but the story obviously isn’t over as Cas is looking to his friends for help on what to do next.
This was a decent read and a nice little ghost story.
