Kendare Blake

August Ross

Anna Dressed in Blood

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered 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. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the track, 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, now stained red and dripping with 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.

Yet she spares Cas's life.

Vicky  Nuñez 

Man is this book intense.

Anna dressed in blood is about Cas, a teenager who after his father's death takes on the family business, ghost-hunting. First of all, I loved Cas, he is just this awesome guy who kills ghosts for a living, but even so he is very introvert he doesn't know how to form relationships. His life is full of pretense, pretending to bond with people to get information about the ghosts he hunts. 

But then comes Anna Dressed in Blood, the ghost of a 16 year old who kills everyone who goes into her house. It should be fairly easy for Cas who is used to the job. But he encounters a challenge. I love Anna's character because even though she kills everyone(in very gruesome ways) who steps into her house, she is very vulnerable and as the story goes we can see more and more of the real person she used to be before her death.

I absolutely loved Kendare Blake's story-telling. I truly did felt scare at times, she just wrote such a powerful story that instantly drags you in and doesn't releases you until the end. Cas is such a great character that although I have no idea what will happen next to him I look forward to reading about him.

★★★★☆ 
3.50 STARS 

I rarely read paranormal fiction. Not because I'm scared of what I'm about to read but because I am not really sure if it can live up to my expectations. You see, I don't get easily scared on anything paranormal. Movies or even real-life confessions about ghosts. I rarely read paranormal fiction because I don't want to get disappointed. 

I was skeptical, at first. This book has been on my shelf for a long time and I hadn't even spare a single glance on this one since I got this. But I got a growing interest after I saw this here in Goodreads. Still a bit skeptical, I started picking this up. I can't exactly say that this book has reached the paranormal standard that I was looking for. It didn't. It was a normal-paced story, maybe a bit on a slow side, with average plot content. Even a bit dragging on some parts. But I also didn't expect much from this since I have a bit of a high standard. 

But maybe because of the low expectation I set on this, it gave me a chance to enjoy this more.

There was something in the whole concept in general that kept me from DNFing this book. It was quite compelling in its own way that maybe only a few readers can feel. It was not the best, obviously by the rate I've given. It was good enough, though. I did find it amusing on how a paranormal book, a book that doesn't even THAT good, can make me looked forward for what was about to happen next. And it means something. 

I always loved tragic romance. It can bring sadness and pain, but I loved how the impact of tragic romance always gets me. I loved the lingering feelings that always stay inside me. And this is no difference. It is not actually a spoiler knowing about the 'tragic romance' because admit it, from the way the synopsis gave you an idea about a boy meeting a dead girl, it always suggests 'tragic'. Let's face the fact. There's always a touch of tragic in this kind of story. And this kind of story always left enough, if not strong, impact on me. And it definitely means something. 

The abrupt ending left me hanging, though. I know this has a second book. The last words from the characters even hinted it. Its just that, it left me a hollow feeling that makes me want to pick up the next book as soon as possible. 

Story-wise, it was quite average. But I really DID ENJOY this book. 3.50 rate is actually a good rate for someone as picky on paranormal fiction as me.

Annika Arguemore

This novel has definitely earned a spot on my favourites shelf! I don't really know what to say. I'm at a loss for words here. No novel has really rendered me speechless before until now. This book is indescribable. Even though the environment this book procured was sort of dark, I still liked it. I was expecting a lot more action between Anna & Cas but I guess it's alright since we're just getting started. Why did it have to end? Thank goodness it's part of a series! I really can't wait for the next one!

nina 

4.5 stars

I didn't expect to like this book as much as I did.

Kate

Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story. . . . Anna is clad in the same dress she wore when she was murdered in 1958, dripping and stained in blood. She has spared the lives of no-one who have entered her derelict house – until Cas arrives. Soon enough, he has fallen in love. But how can it possibly work when she is a ghost and he is a ghost-hunter?

Anna #1

Nessa Luna

Read this review, and many more on my blog October Tune!

Okay, first of all I have to tell you that I was a bit disappointed with this book. I had hoped it would be a really creepy, scary story, that I would have to sleep with the lights on – as the text on the back of the book says – but it was actually not that scary. Honestly, I felt like I was reading an average YA novel, other than the fact that the main character was a boy and Anna (view spoiler)[(his love-interest) (hide spoiler)] a murderous ghost. Okay, there were some parts where I was freaking out, like the part where they first meet Anna, and a part somewhere close to the end of the book.

Even though it wasn’t really scary, I found it a nice book to read; the writing was good, and I really liked all the characters (apart from the ‘Trojan Army’ as Thomas called them). I liked Cas, I liked Anna, I liked Cas’ mum (and her cat), Thomas and his granddad, Carmel (though I kept on reading Caramel), yes they were good characters.

I found myself comparing this book to the show Supernatural a lot, because the first chapter of the book (in which Cas ‘kills’ the ghost of a hitchhiker) reminded me a bit of the first episode (it wasn’t completely the same, but it both included a hitchhiker (sort of) and a bridge). The fact that the main character’s name was Cas (I had hoped it would be Castiel, but alas), and the fact that he hunts and kills ghost for a living, like his dad used to do (you know, the family business), yeah, a bit like Supernatural. Not saying it’s a bad thing, in fact, it made me like the book a lot more!

Personally, I felt like the romance thing (view spoiler)[(between Cas and Anna in case that wasn’t obvious yet) (hide spoiler)] wasn’t really necessary, but that’s just because I am not really a big fan of romance (I like it, sometimes, and I do ‘ship’ people a lot, but sometimes I just wish that there weren’t that much (YA) romance novels in the world).

In the end, I found Anna Dressed In Blood a very good story, and I am certainly going to read the second book!

Colleen

4.5 Stars but I'll round up to 5 Stars

This review contains some spoilers.

After the last couple of books I read were underwhelming, I was really hoping for something that would grab my attention and keep me captivated. I started to read These Shallow Graves, but the writing style was off-putting. So I moved that to the bottom of my To Read pile and picked up Anna Dressed in Blood. And I am very glad that I did!

Anna Dressed in Blood had my rapt attention from the very first page. The action kicks right in. The premise was attention-grabbing. The characters were interesting and unique where so many Young Adult books have cookie cutter characters. (view spoiler)[For example, I'll admit that I expected the queen bee of the school, Carmel, to be the absolutely stereotypical mean girl. So I was pleasantly surprised that her character was more complex than that, and I found myself liking her quite a bit by the end. (hide spoiler)] And the plot kept me guessing the whole way through.

I cannot remember exactly what made me pick up this book. I've been a bit fed up with YA lately. But the description sounded interesting, and the cover is gorgeous. There is something so arresting about grey-scale with splashes of red. It is one of my favorite color schemes particularly for book covers. Combine that with the art itself which is just stylized enough to make it interesting without being cartoon-like. Subtle yet striking. 

I do usually notice when an author writes from the opposite gender particularly in first person. In this, case it worked fairly well. (view spoiler)[The only time it felt contrived was towards the end when the romance got a little cheesy. It felt like that romance was just ramped up as a crowd pleaser rather than feeling organic to the characters. (hide spoiler)] But it is possible that I am much harder on men writing from the perspective of women. After all, I cannot accurately speak as to the thoughts of a teenage boy. 

This is the sort of book that is hard to put down. I read it almost entirely in one day and stayed up late to do so. It pulled me right away and was a pretty fast-paced story. I really did not know what was going to happen next. Oh, I had lots of theories as to what would happen, but this was a time when it was fun to be wrong. It is no fun when the big twists are evident from early on as has happened to me with several best selling Thrillers. But it also is not satisfying when the twist is something so left field that it does not make sense or leaves you confused. Thankfully, Anna Dressed in Blood was the entertaining type of surprise. And every time it surprised me, I enjoyed it more and more.

As I started reading, the first thing I thought of and kept thinking of at the beginning, was that it reminded me of the TV show Supernatural. There are some distinct similarities: They both involve the story of a young man who inherited the family business of hunting supernatural beings. They both have a subplot of revenge against the monster who killed a parent. They both balance a fun undertone with slightly gory monster killing. The main character's nickname is even the same as a character from Supernatural. But least you think that this is some poorly disguised fan fiction, worry not! Anna Dressed in Blood may have things in common with that show, but the nitty gritty of it is quite different, and this story stands well on its own. (Although it does through in a few other pop culture references as well - mainly to Ghostbusters.)

The tone had just enough snark to make it fun and keep the story from being too dark or dreary. The narrative is all told in first person from Cas's point of view. This was definitely an example of first person that I liked. There was some blood and guts but nothing over the top gory. There definitely was a horror element to it, but I was never scared. Overall, the story was a wonderful balance of snarkiness, horror, suspense, and some moving emotional moments to balance everything out. So even though the writing was not the best, the story as a whole was particularly enjoyable.

The only thing about this book that dampened my enthusiasm a bit was the ending. Since this is a duology, I was expecting something of a cliffhanger ending. (view spoiler)[However, there was a part at the end where the main character gets knocked unconscious. Since he is the narrator, this results in the reader missing an important point and having to have the other characters relay what happened which was annoying and gimmicky. Granted, that was not the very end of the book; enough other things happened after that to recover some enjoyment, but that moment grandly annoyed me. The only other negative might be that the romance angle got cheesy towards the end, and that took some of the power out of the conclusion. (hide spoiler)] However, I still loved the book overall and am looking forward to reading the sequel. 

b>RATING FACTORS:
Ease of Reading: 5 Stars
Writing Style: 5 Stars
Characters and Character Development: 5 Stars
Plot Structure and Development: 4 Stars
Level of Captivation: 5 Stars
Originality: 4 Stars

I remember seeing this book at a book fair when I was maybe 12 years old and my mum not letting me buy it because there was a content warning on it...it’s kinda wild I’m only just reading it now 8 years later.

I really did enjoy this book, despite being a YA it was honestly quite a good horror/ghost story, I read most of it in the first day on the night, early hours, and some of it did spook me. It was really well written and the descriptions were really good!!

I wasn’t a fan of the romance at all which is what lost it a star but for a YA horror it was a really good read! I really liked the ghosts in it, especially Anna, the way they were written was just really well done and made the scenes really vivid.

I have the second one somewhere I might start that soon, hopefully it’s just as good

Joycelyn Ghansah

It's intense, endearing, and creepy. It flowed well at times, but there's a lot of things I felt...incomplete? Unnecessary? Cas tried his best. Carmel and Anna deserve the world. Thomas deserves all the good stuff. Everyone needs time to grieve. Anna's mom deserves to go to the pits of hell for what she did.

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered 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. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay. Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, 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, now stained red and dripping with 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. Yet she spares Cas's life.

Amanda

** spoiler alert **
           The characters are okay, they started to grow on me, and the idea of the story is good, but the execution feels off somehow. The bad guy being voodoo related felt weirdly racist and unnecessary. Same with the Canadian setting. The book would have been better if it had stayed fully fantasy instead of appropriating odd details from real things. It's like the author did just enough research to say "look, my exotic other is Real" but not enough to make any of it actually feel real.

It's really too bad because the story hooked me right away and was a generally enjoyable read. But it didn't feel like it was set in Canada in anything other than name, and the "evil voodoo" addition in the final quarter made me feel oddly uncomfortable, like sitting down to dinner with a 'politely' racist relative.

Chloe Rowley

Sarah S

I think that my expectations were much too high because I thought I'd end giving this one at least 4 stars, but I can't give it more than 3.5! Unsurprisingly I really loved Anna... I mean, how could I not? But other than that I wasn't really invested. I might give the sequel a try though, for Anna.

Ashley Wendt

This was such a surprising read for me! I’ll be honest this is one of the few books I knew very little about before going into it. I never read the synopsis, but I love Kendare Blake’s Three Crowns series and the cover & title of this sounded like a great October read. I didn’t expect most of what happened in this book. Maybe because horror/thriller is not normally my jam, so it was a refreshing read…also I’m a sucker for a romance and this was an intriguing romance. And even though my October TBR is slammed….I may need to see if I can fit book 2 in yet!

Celeste Richardson

3 & 1/2 stars. If Dean Winchester was a teenaged only-child whose mother was still alive, this could have been his story. It was creepy and fun and a little sad.

Anna u haljini od krvi

I think I love it even more now, than the first time I read it. (Almost a five star read..)
This is one of the best *spooky books I've read.

P.S. I don't know how the original backcover looks, but I hate Croatian edition. The synopsis is really bad, it makes the book look like a cheesy drama with some supernatural elements.

Marissa Luzio 

This book was right up my ally! You guys know how much I love the evil, dark, female characters in books. Cas Lowood is basically the new and improved cool ghostbuster, in modern day. At first I mean, how serious can this book be with a ghost hunter traveling across the country with his witchy mom and weird cat? Little did I know that this was going to be a gruesome, dark twisted story about Anna, whom is literally dressed in blood; the title and cover don't lie to you! Come on, the ratings and reviews can talk for themselves, this is Kendare Blake's most reviewed and rated best-seller worthy book! So if you haven't read it yet? Read it. You won't regret it.

Cas had been killing since he was 14! 14!!! That's a crazy childhood to have and to then top it all off, his father dies. Well, Cass makes his dad proud by inheriting the hunter's mysterious and dangerous athame, and he goes to town finishing what his father had started. Until, he meets Anna. Never has he encountered nor heard of a spirit so powerful and angry. Anna was killed in 1958. While walking to prom in her beautiful white dress, her throat was slit, blood covered her body entirely, thus earning her the name, Anna Dressed in Blood. It's described in the novel as:

"Someone cut her throat, but that’s an understatement. Someone nearly cut her head clean off. They say she was wearing a white party dress, and when they found her, the whole thing was stained red. That’s why they call her Anna Dressed in Blood."
Pretty gruesome and frightening stuff. I'd be pretty angry too with what Anna had to really go through that night. This was an interesting book because we didn't only get to read and learn about Cas, being our protagonist. Instead, we also got to learn a lot about Anna; her background, past, personality, why she is the way she is. It was said in the novel that she had been tied to her house and has never been able to step a foot past her front porch. Being as this is a legend and known to the townspeople, many have tried to check it out for silly pranks, and only 27 have gone in, and have never been seen alive again. I loved her character because she wasn't black and white, she was a gruesome killer yet a victim at the same time, evil yet innocent. It really put things into perspective about morality and I loved how Cas handled the situation. Also, there is a huge twist at the end about the real reason why Anna died, and it puts a whole new meaning on cruel and thriller.

This book is actually in talks about being turned into a movie!!! And the director being the one and only.... Stephenie Meyer.... this should be interesting. Though i'm still excited!

IF you liked this review, check out more YA and other genre books on my blog!
http://keepcalmandloveboooks.blogspot.ca

Elizabeth Neill

Stark Koenig

I knew it was a red flag when, early in the book, a character casually dropped the "any native burial grounds around there?" suggestion for why some funky magic was going on in the town, and by the time... (view spoiler)[it became clear that the big bad was a voodoo-black-magic-spirit-monster thing, (hide spoiler)] I was done. If an author is going to plunder and pilfer from the traditions and beliefs of black and indigenous folks to make their stories, the least they can do is do their research and avoid rehashing the same old stereotypes. Want a good, spooky story that uses Afro-Caribbean magic really well? Read Brown Girl in the Ring, by Nalo Hopkinson.

Kim Tyo-Dickerson

The reason I love Buffy is the reason I tore through this novel in one afternoon. Cas is a lone ghost killer wielding his murdered father's athame, a mysterious knife with supernatural power that allows Cas to hunt down and kill rampaging ghosts. A cryptic tip in a letter sends him and his mom to the Canadian home town of Anna Dressed In Blood, a ghost that violently dismembers anyone who crosses her doorstep. His mother's white magic, a godfatherly Brit in London with a library of books, and an unlikely group of high school friends join Cas as he tries to unravel the clues to both Anna and his father's terrible, bloody ends.

I wish I had brought the sequel home from the Library. I'd be reading that rather than writing this.

Mikayla Cassidy

Read this for class but oh my gosh you guys it’s so good!! The gothic romance of my dreams fr I loved it.

chloe mcpherson

11 year old me loved this book, as I got older I had forgotten the plot so i decided to pick this up again and re-read it. 19 year old me did not love this book.

Cas is a ghost hunter, just like the generations of fathers before him. Every ghost he sends to the other side he is one step closer to catching the ghost that killed his father.
He is instantly drawn to Anna, also known as Anna dressed in blood. Thinking this is going to be an easy kill, he is proven wrong when witnessing a classmate being murdered. So Cas dives deeper into Anna's past, how she was murdered even befriending the killing ghost, only to discover there is a more is a more sinister evil he is up against.

what i liked about this book was that it was fast paced, it was easy to get through. I also liked the story behind Anna dressed in blood. But thats about it.
I didn't get the romance between Cas and Anna, it just seemed to come out of nowhere.
what also annoyed me was when the classmate was murdered and the teenagers that witnessed the murder just went to school the next day and tried to act like nothing happened.
I didn't really like any of the personality of any of the characters, and I didn't care about any of the characters that were killed.

Cookie

Da ist also dieser Jugendliche namens Cas, mit einer Hexe als Mutter, der mordende Geister jagt. Er trat damit das Erbe seines Vaters an, der auf einem seiner Streifzüge grausam von einem Geist getötet wurde. Als nächstes für Cas steht "Anna im blutroten Kleid" auf der Liste, und nachdem er sich mit ein paar Jugendlichen in seiner neuen Heimat Ontario angefreundet hat, um mehr über diesen Geist zu erfahren, kommt es zu einem schrecklichen Zwischenfall. Cas ist sich nun noch sicherer, den grausamen Geist von Anna endlich zu "erlösen", leider ist das nicht so einfach, wie zunächst gedacht. Anna, die sonst jeden tötet, der sich zu ihr ins Haus wagt, verschont Cas und dieser wiederum verliebt sich in sie. Gemeinsam mit seinen neuen Freunden, unter denen sich auch Thomas befindet, der sich mit Magie auskennt, schaffen sie es schließlich Anna vom Morden abzubringen, doch da fängt es erst an, wirklich spannend zu werden..

Ich habe mich hier wirklich richtig gut unterhalten gefühlt. Stellenweise konnte ich das Buch kaum zur Seite legen, weil Anna einen selber als Leser irgendwann so sehr fasziniert, wie sie auch Cas in den Bann zieht. Stellenweise war allerdings auch die "Luft" für mich "raus", nachdem Cas sich mit Anna anfreundet, weil es dem Geist das Geheimnisvolle genommen hat. Doch der Autorin gelingt es wirklich, das Blatt noch einmal zu wenden. Alleine die Geschichte von Anna, hat mir eine Gänsehaut beschert und es gibt so manche Wendung, mit der ich nicht gerechnet hätte. Ein spannendes, wenn auch stellenweise sehr grausames Buch (mit Blick auf die Zielgruppe), das mich super unterhalten hat.

Toni Turner

This was the perfect spooky read for me and I can not wait to dive into the sequel. Who doesn't love a scooby gabg? Honestly? There are just so many good things about this friend group and Cas as a main character. Like, they all do stupid shit. Especially him. But it's so good I can't even stay mad.

Book #1 of the #readathon completed!

This was pretty decent. It was far less horror and far more paranormal romance than I expected, but it was an easy read. It turned some typical YA tropes on their heads and certain characters definitely surprised me, which is always a good thing.

Anna Dressed in Blood

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