Anna Dressed in Bloody by Kendare Blake #review

Title: Anna Dressed in Blood
Author: Kendare Blake
Publisher: Tor Teen, 2011

If glittery vampires and wangsty, lovestruck angels have caused you to all but give up on young adult paranormal reads, then Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake is a shot in the arm for the genre. Granted, this ghostly tale still features many of the  tropes: the lone-wolf ghost hunter and his team comprising a slightly ditzy witchy mother, complete with black cat; the nerdy psychic sidekick; the popular girl, who happens to have a brain and a heart to go with her looks; and the jock who grudgingly goes along for the ride.

Cas has inherited not only his ghost hunter father’s magical athame (a knife) but he’s trying to fill his dad’s shoes by travelling from town to town to put murderous ghosts to rest. His vocation is dangerous and he needs all his wits about him. Although he has outsider status, he keeps his cool when he starts at a new school. He has all the qualities of a hero: a mission,  courage and enough sass to give as good as he gets when the jocks start behaving as jocks are wont.

But he meets his match when he receives a tip to hunt the notorious Anna Dressed in Blood, a blood-thirsty ghost that haunts a house in Thunder Bay, Canada. She is far stronger than any Cas has encountered, and this is a job he won’t be able to complete on his own. Even though he doesn’t want to endanger others, he learns to rely on his small team of friends. Things aren’t helped when his emotions get in the way of doing the deed, and ghosts from his past return to complicate matters.

While this novel isn’t going to win prizes for originality – it plays on popular horror themes and offers quite a nod toward the TV series Supernatural – it’s nevertheless a solidly writteAnna Dressed in Blood lends itself to being adapted for film, and rumour has it that this is in the works, with Stephanie Meyer as producer. Blake, however, balances gore with horror in the first of a series that promises to give the Twilight universe a run
n tale and takes more than a few unexpected twists to challenge its likeable cast of characters.
for its money.