Review: Anna Dressed in Blood

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

My rating: 5 of 5 stars



Theseus Cassio Lowood, or Cas for short, comes from a long line of “alternative” thinkers. His mom is a Wiccan and is pretty powerful in her own right. I’m now sure how to describe Cas’s Dad, other than to say he was good at dispatching dangerous and murderous ghosts. That is until he met one powerful enough to get the jump on him. So Cas has picked up his Dad’s mantle and with his Mom he travels the world dispatching dangerous/murderous ghosts. “Anna Dressed in Blood” is in Thunder Bay and if the rumors about her are true, she could be the worst murderer the world has ever seen.

I have to preface my thoughts with a personal note. I recently got sucked into the TV series “Supernatural”. I missed it when it first aired and it seemed like one of those shows you should really see from the beginning. So when Netflix put the whole series on their streaming service I started watching…I love it!

Now, having said all that…I finally picked up Anna Dressed in Blood and could not put it down. What grabbed me from the beginning was the ghost hunting similarity it shared with Supernatural…what kept me riveted to the story was the writing. I’m not sure how to describe it…I wanted to absorb every word. Some authors spend a lot of words describing things…Kendare Blake isn’t short in her descriptions…but every word fits and you feel like it would be missed if it wasn’t there. The attention to important details was astounding. How’s that for an explanation? She weaved a story that was so compelling I fought with myself over whether to savor it slowly or just keep reading cuz I couldn’t put it down.

Her characters were so fully realized and I loved Cas. He had such mature internal dialog. His ghost hunting job was so important to him that he would forego a lot of school activities…UNLESS, the thought he could glean useful info on the ghost he was hunting…and it was the conversation he had in his head about the way he put a note dropped on his desk in his math book to make it look like he would consider writing back to the girl later…know he would not, but not wanting to hurt her feelings by being careless with the same note. But as soon as the bell rang he knew he had to scoot out of class in a hurry and pretend he didn’t hear her calling him.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough. The writing is so worth the price of the book, but be forewarned…this is a horror story and parts of it are a very tough read, even for someone who loves horror like I do.




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