Review: Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Synopsis
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.

Quick Review: I really like this story though it creeped me out. I think Anna is a force to be reckoned with and when it's revealed why she is so powerful...let me just say I was sick to my stomach and sympathetic. Cas, for the first time in life is opening up and making friends with the popular girl in school, Carmel and a witch named Thomas. He gathers information on town legend Anna, who is known for her murderous nature. When they finally come face to face, he realizes she is no easy kill and that there is more to her situation. He begins to ponder where ghost go when he sends them on and what will happen to Anna if he decides to kill her. Anna is bound to the house she haunts, she can't leave and Cas becomes determined to discover why even if it destroys him.

I liked the characters in this book. Cas makes for a good male lead and the reason why he became a ghost hunter seems interesting. It's cool that at a young age he's made a name for himself as ghost killer. The writing is quick and detailed giving a good sense of the world that Cas and Anna live in. Honestly, this book freaked me out but in a scary movie can't stop watching kind of way. Overall, this is a good read.