Anna Dressed in Blood – Kendare Blake (2012)

misskleber
Jan 12, 2018
2 min read

Picture Sam from Supernatural + The Scoobies from Buffy the Vampire Slayer + Dexter + that episode of Bones where Brennan wakes up in post-Katrina New Orleans, only not as cool as any of those things.

Cas (Theseus Cassio) Lowood is a killer.

Twist: he kills killers who are already dead.

I really wanted to like this book, and I think for the most part I did, except that it took me a bit too long to get through it. It wasn’t particularly scary, or particularly haunting, I didn’t feel a Supernatural or Dexter level of excitement. It wasn’t particularly romantic, I didn’t feel a Buffy-Angel level of attraction (not even a Wesley-Cordelia Level!).

The action would just get going, but then we’d take a break for a Hoagie (I wish I was kidding).

Now most of this book takes place in Thunder Bay, Ontario (which in and of itself was a little odd for an author who did her M.A. at Middlesex U (London) and lives in Lynnwood, Washington), but being a dyed-in-the-wool Canadian… I’ve NEVER heard of a Hoagie in a Canadian context.

Apparently the romance is where she doesn’t kill him, instead opting to scar him psychologically for life by dumping him into a basement flooded with bodies, and he shares his “my-daddy-was-killed-by-a-thing-that-went-bump-in-the-night-now-ghost-killing-is-my-destiny” woes.

Seems romantic to me…

I wanted this book to be scary and cool, and it was so close. When you open it up the text is dark red instead of black, making my hopes pretty high.

I wanted it to be Cabin in the Woods but I ended up with the Psycho remake, not awful, just… disappointing. I wanted it to be a better Halloween read.

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