Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story. . .

Cas Lowood is an unusual teen. No, he’s not a boy wizard, but instead a boy who kills ghosts. He inherited the vocation from his father, who was brutally killed by a flesh-eating ghost a few years ago, and now he vows to hunt that ghost down and avenge his father.

But before he can do that, he is requested to make a visit to Thunder Bay, Ontario and hunt down a ghost who needs to be put down to rest. Anna Dressed in Blood, as she is known, seems like a regular ghost, but Cas is strangely drawn to her when he first hears about her.

But when Cas finally gets to Thunder Bay, he finds that destroying Anna isn’t as easy as he thought it was going to be. Anna is more powerful than the usual ghosts he kill and he can’t figure out why. Its only when he hears Anna’s story does he begin to understand her and her power better, and does the unthinkable of falling in love with her.

This is going to be a tough review to write. Anna Dressed in Blood came highly recommended to me by my good friend Chelsey, and normally we have very similar taste in books. But this wasn’t the case for this book.

I think this book might be case of expecting too much, at least for me. This book has a high rating on Goodreads, and a lot of my GR friends absolutely loved it and were thrilled with it. By the time I got around to read it, I think I was expecting way too much.

But let’s start with the good stuff.

I really enjoyed reading a YA novel from a male perspective. I don’t tend to gravitate towards them (other than the obvious HP and Artemis Fowl), but I was pleasantly surprised by Cas. He was cocky, self-assured, and very witty. I knew he was going to meet his downfall soon, so I didn’t mind his cockiness too much.

Anna’s story was also a surprise; I knew something very gruesome must’ve happened to her to have given her those extra powers, but I couldn’t have imagined how traumatizing her story would be. Her story really tugged on my heartstrings, and before long, I was feeling sorry for her right along with Cas.

Also, how awesome that the story takes place in Ontario?! Go Canada!

I was told that this book was scary and to read this book in the daytime, because it was going to filter into my dreams and make them nightmares. But that’s not what I got. I’m actually very easily spooked, and for that reason refuse to watch horror movies, and was slightly apprehensive when opening up this book, thinking I was about to be thoroughly spooked. But I wasn’t.

That’s not to say that Anna isn’t creepy; she is. She tears people apart limb from limb and is a force to be reckoned with. But then as soon as she meets Cas, she simmers down to a loveable, docile ghost, sort of like Casper. I was severely disappointed.

The romance was also something that I didn’t quite get. I knew that Cas and Anna were going to like each other, but when it happened in the story, it was a little bit awkward. It happened very quickly, and it didn’t seem believable. Anna was terrorizing Cas’ classmates, and he was calling her ‘my Anna’. I might have missed something, but I also didn’t quite understand how Cas could kiss Anna; I mean, how solid was she?

All in all, I didn’t dislike this book; I actually did enjoy it. But at the end of the day, I wasn’t left quivering in my boots, which is what I has expected.

So for that: 3/5.

Thanks for reading,

Ikhlas