Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood is a ghost hunter. He’s got a knife and an inherited power that allows him to take out the real baddies, the ghosts who kill. Following a tip, he travels a small town in Canada where he finally meets his match in a powerful ghost called, you guessed it: Anna dressed in blood.

I loved the concept of this book. It’s powerful and as gory and horrifically scary as a terrific ghost story should be. The characters, even the small ones, are unusual, and the action scenes made me grip my Kindle so hard I thought it would bleed e-ink.

I wanted to rave about this book, but I can’t, mainly because the writing was uneven. The main character’s bravado and almost pathological “smirking” was one problem.

I didn’t buy the love story. There wasn’t much reason for it that I could see; it happened too fast and didn’t make much sense. (I’ve seen a lot of this in recent YA, and I’ll write a post about the curse of the Twilight romance one of these days.)

But I protest too much—truth be told, I read this book at a feverish pace. And despite the problems, there are moments of brilliance in Anna. It’s one of those books that sticks with you even when you put it down—all of which means, there’s a helluva good story in Anna Dressed in Blood.

So if you like horror stories, pick it up. I dare you.

(It’s listed at a really low price right now: $2.99 on Kindle at least last I checked  Amazon.)