Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake
Just when I thought that the mini-genre of dark fantasy YA couldn’t be mined for anything else, something comes along like this took that charms the pants off me. How could you fail to be entranced when it opens with a teenage ghost hunter picking up a dead hitchhiker?
Cas soon picks up sidekicks when he and his mother move to Thunder Bay to investigate the haunting of a girl known as “Anna Dressed in Blood.” With the help of the Queen Bee, Carmel, and local dorky novice witch/telepath Theo, a dare to go up to the porch of a haunted house turns serious, fast, when someone gets murdered by Anna.
I liked that the characters have plausible motivations for what they do; no one is just the jerk/bitch etc. because that’s what their role calls for. It had some interesting twists and turns. I loved that it referenced creepy ghost stories and urban legends.
This is a great book, and it would have been a 5 star amazing book but the ending seemed a little rushed and confusing. I’m not sure why an aluminum bat could affect a being of evil power, for example. And what was it with the house itself? And why exactly did X do whatever to Anna? What exactly did X get out of it? I wasn’t sure what, exactly, happened to Anna at the end either, but there’s a sequel, so I bet she’s okay. Still dead, but maybe okay.
