Tuesday, September 3, 2013

Anna Dressed In Blood by Kendare Blake Review


"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."

Blood makes every book more fascinating yet also nauseating. There's, of course, a lot of blood. You can obviously tell by the cover and the title. (Nice cover, BTW.) Plus a lot of strange deaths and haunted houses make Anna Dressed In Blood even more creepy. *Sigh* I don't see why a lot of people like this book so much. Sure, it's easy to settle into. It's easy to read. But I don't see how Anna Dressed In Blood is appealing and pretty. (I hate it whenever people like things, when I can't see what exactly what they're liking.) In general, Anna Dressed In Blood is a book. And a book is a book. Not fantastic. Not a 'WOW!" Just a book, to me.

Overall, Anna Dressed In Blood is an okay book. Again, I don't see why Anna Dressed In Blood is such a big deal. There's so questions. Why did Anna spare Cas? ('Because he's special.' Please don't say that.) Why is Cas so obsessed about Anna's situation? ('There's something about her' doesn't cut it.) Why does Cas's mom let her only son hunt ghost who may kill him? (In my defense, moms don't let their sons do anything dangerous. Especially killing dead ghost, who may have a bloodthirsty vengeance.) Why Cas doesn't kill Anna at the first chance he has? (Oh, because he is overpowered by a damn ghost. He had a chance to kill her, but no...[Look at the first parentheses in this paragraph. Same explanation.])

The plot. I'm not even going to start on that. Anna Dressed In Blood's writing doesn't suck me into the story. I read it and tolerate it until about halfway through when I started to get bored. (Luckily it gets sort of interesting in the middle.) The writing is simply what it is. There's no strong or appealing call to it. It's not addicting or boring. It's what it is.

The ending is perhaps the best thing in Anna Dressed In Blood. It's when I start to like Anna Dressed In Blood. I like the determination and persistence Cas shows in the end. Even though I don't see why Cas is so "I like her, I think" towards the end. Anna's a damn ghost, Cas. I don't get it.

Characters:

Let's start with Anna even though Anna isn't the one telling the story from her POV. (Cas is. I do not want to know what is Anna thinking.) Even though Anna really wants to kill Cas, or at least her dark side does, I feel as if she only exist as a cursed challenge to Cas.

Now Cas is left trying to tie in his pieces. I hate how the author gives him a pretty tragic past which he barely mentions in the book. (His father died by a ghost's ghostly hand. Cas really want revenge.) Cas, you must be ill. Why would you end up liking a girl who almost killed you? She killed your classmates, nearly kill the girl who likes you and might have ending up killing your new best friend in the long run. I like how determined and persistent he is, but sometimes it is annoying.

Rating: Two out of Five

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