Ashley's April Book - Anna Dressed in Blood

Title: Anna Dressed in Blood
Author: Kendare Blake
Year Published: 2011

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.

Why?: Amazon has been recommending this book for me for a while, and I've always thought it sounded really interesting. Apparently I have this thing for finding really creepy/scary books. And I really enjoy reading them, so I'm hoping this one doesn't disappoint. Plus, the cover is very intriguing. And creepy. Like most of the books I've recently read.

Expectations: I expect this the book to be scary, but also very entertaining. It seems like there will be a little bit of romance, a lot of mystery, some hardcore ghost killing, and lots of other awesome things wrapped up in one book. I've never read anything by Kendare Blake (I think this might be her debut novel?), so I'm really interested to see what her style is. The sequel, Girl of Nightmares, comes out in September (I think), so I expect this to be good enough to warrant a sequel.

Judging a book by its cover: This cover is kind of terrifying. There's a girl floating in front of an old Victorian house, with red all over her white dress. And red feathers/leaves/pieces of cloth flying around her. It kind of reminds me of American Horror Story. I'm so excited for this book.


--Ashley