Anna dressed in blood by Blake Kendare (RIP #2)

Book Summary (from of the book)

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 Review

Well this one certainly went fast! I bought this book on my trip last week-end and I was quite eager to start it. Not only because it could make part of my R.I.P challenge, but also because I had read good reviews about this one.

I really liked this book, like White Cat and Red Glove it touches the supernatural, without falling into the amazingly vast compendium of books who go for the vampire-is-the-only-supernatural-being. Don’t get me wrong, I like vampire books, I do, but when that’s all you see…well it just gets boring. 

Back to the book. I really liked all the main characters, Cass, even though he is a little bit too much into this I –can-do-everything-on-my-own thing, finally let’s people in and his new “group” is as different as entertaining. Something I like to note is that Kendare presents teens that, yeah, they are teens, but they also know how to talk, how to interact properly with each other, a subject that Naiche mentioned in a recent post.

The other thing that I liked about this YA book, is that even though there is a little bit of romance behind (little, as subtle) there is a fairly healthy relationship (I mean as healthy as it can get with a ghost), not only between Cas and Anna, but also the way the Carmel and Thomas interact with each other and others.

I have to say, I did not see it coming, the way it ended, and this is good! Often with YA the end of the book is a bit predictable and even though this doesn’t mean that the book is bad, it means that you are not necessarily eager to finish it, because…well, you already know what’s coming. For this one however, there was a lot happening at the end, and when I finished I went immediately online to make sure that there is a second part (there is, but for now only hardcover).

I actually was expecting to be satisfied with the book, the premise was good, the reviews where good with some splashes of disappointing towards the end. But I was more than satisfied, it gave me some twists and turns where I wasn’t expecting it and I like that. Is different enough not to be too far fetch without falling into a cookie cutter!