Anna dressed in Blood

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

3.5 stars.

And just when you think you’ve read every possible variable of a story in YA paranormal Anna dressed in Blood comes along. Kudos to Kendare Blake for that!

You know all those scary, blood-and-gore movies you’ve seen (which I can assure I haven’t) about ax-murderers, chainsawers, hellraisers or nightmares on Elm Street? The ones of which I can’t even watch the trailers on TV or I’ll hear creepy noises in the house at night at least for a month? If you have… have you ever sided with the murderer?
‘Cause in this book, the murderer is not necessarily the villain.

This is what I liked about Anna dressed in Blood: it tells the story from a different perspective.
Anna was brutally murdered during the 50s, while going to a school dance, and the perpetrator was never found. Cass is a teen ghost-hunter, a skill he has inherited from his father, also brutally murdered during a job. When Cass goes to Hunter Bay, Canada, to find Anna and banish her, he’s in for a surprise. Anna is an incredibly strong and scary ghost who has killed a lot of innocent people, but she is also a victim, unwillingly obliged to act as she does by some mysterious power.

Anna is, without a doubt, the shining star of the book. A great character, it’s impossible not to feel heartbroken by what happened to her, when we learn how she became what she is. I have to give it to Kendare Blake that her spooky scenes’ descriptions are extremely well done and so vivid and I am very glad this isn’t a movie, or I wouldn’t have slept for a century (awesome first scene with the hitchhiker, by the way). I don’t usually read horror but this, I liked lot. There’s tension, suspense, gore, gallons and gallons of blood, I swear I could hear Anna’s dress dripping blood on the floor *shudders*. Hers alone is the merit for this book getting 3.5 stars from me.

Cass is a different story. I got around to liking him in the end, but for a good part of the book the description that best fit him for me was “pompous ass”. What’s with the aloofness “I’m more experienced and better than all of you, mere mortals?” True, he made me crack up in more than one occasion with his witty, sarcastic remarks but mostly, he managed irritated me. Too full of himself.
I was also slightly creeped out by the fact that he falls in love with a corpse… but wait, she’s not a corpse, she’s a ghost. Then why are ghosts in this book corporeal, yet they can disappear into thin air? How do you tell a ghost from a person? I don’t know why I was disturbed by this – after all, vampires are dead too – yet I was. Might be because she was not exactly your garden variety girl-next-door while in killing mode, who knows.

Thomas and Carmel – but Cass’s mother, Morfran and Will, too – did not really come alive for me (huh, no pun intended), I felt there could have been a bit more character development there and there would have been a bit less eye-rolling from my part.
For example, I nearly threw the book when Cass goes to call Thomas for the summoning spell but since he’s canoodling with Carmel he goes away, leaving them undisturbed. What?! Making out is more important than saving the day? Gimme a break, Cass.

Still, Anna dressed in Blood was a lot of fun to read and pretty original too (even though the author could have avoided one of the various tropes of YA paranormal by leaving out the unnecessary and pre-packed romance, in my opinion), leaving us with an open end but no brutal cliffhanger.
I’m definitely interested in picking up the sequel to this and I want to beg the author to – pretty please! – not make it unnecessarily cheesy.