Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Anna Dressed in Blood
Kendare Blake
Series: Anna, #1
Released: August 30th, 2011
Publisher: Tor Teen
Rating: 4.5 stars
Fright Scale: 5 out of 10
Reviewed by: Mel

Cas Lowood, armed with his late father's athame knife, kills ghosts. In Thunder Bay, Anna, forever 16, drips blood on her white dress from throat slit in 1958, and rips apart anyone who enters her house - except Cas. He makes new friends - high school queen Carmel, jock Will, admiring nerd Thomas and Tom's voodoo grandpa Morfran - to fight this demon.

Someone please pass me the glue. My heart just needs a little piecing back together. One out of a million pieces to go people. Anna Dressed in Blood was exactly what I expected it to be. Filled with blood, action, ghosts and romance, what's not to love? I mean, blood and ghosts are really attractive.

Seventeen year old Cas Lowood has been killing the dead ever since his early teen years. His father's athame knife is practically his best friend when it got in his possession when Cas' father died killing ghosts. And to make this a perfect family, Cas' mother is a white witch. Cas was a really likable male protagonist for someone who has never really had the typical human life. He had a strong, determined personality and his humour was must a bonus which also created a nice balance against the grotesque descriptions Kendare Blake just had to throw in every now and again. I won't argue that Cas can take some time warming up to but I truly did love him in the end, he was a fierce-ly-fantabulous character. This being said, Anna was the true highlight in this book. Well duh, the title is Anna Dressed in Blood. Anywho, she was a two-faced character- in a good way of course. An innocent yet monstrous girl. A loving yet heartless soul. A girl with a white dress, that's been painted by the colour of death. I began to think I was losing it when I had urges to hug Anna. Loving ghosts is not okay in real life. It's the second sign of madness after the first sign; seeing one. While Anna seemed depthless to begin with, the story craftily unravels the reasons of Anna's motives and why she has become the way she is.

What I appreciate about Kendare Blake is how she never takes the easy way out or twists a great potential novel into a heavily clichéd one. I bet she even wrote this book in her sleep. Firstly, we have the potential of a love triangle between a dead goth girl, miss popularity and new boy at school. But nope, Kendare doesn't do that. Then she could have taken the easy way out by making it new badass guy at school and miss popularity. And no again, Kendare creates a seemingly impossible romance between a ghost killer and a ghost and doesn't twist it into an angst-driven chemistry. I love her for that. But then on second thoughts… maybe not. I mean, while I wasn't scared right out of my pants, I was sure close to it not even one hundred pages in. I hate being scared. At 12am in the morning. Not. Cool. I seriously do not favour letting my imagination spread to visualise chopped in half bodies. That kinda stuff makes me want to throw up my dinner. It was a nice dinner too... It would have been a pity.

A deliciously bloody novel accompanied with a romance, kick-ass male lead and enough ghosts to make you shudder, Anna Dressed in Blood in my opinion is under-hyped. You're probably about to tell me that it's really hyped. But I'm just saying that the entire world should read this. If you have not picked up a copy, this Halloween is the time to do it!