Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

I had high hopes for Anna and all her creepiness. Really high hopes. Some of those expectations were met and others not so much. I hate that I only felt ‘meh’ about this book while so many others adored. I will say that compared to other similar YA novels, this one shines.

In Anna, we meet Cas who is a young, aspiring Dean Winchester. They are the exact same character. And since I loved the first few seasons of Supernatural, I was thrilled with Cas. I even enjoyed the heck out of his cockiness. Anyway, he’s a ghost hunter/slayer with a special knife meant for slaughtering the baddies. He gets wind of a particularly nasty spook dubbed ‘Anna Dressed in Blood’ and heads to Canada with his mom. All of the things go down. The end. Ha!

Now, Anna had the potential to be one bad ass murderous ghost. Our first time meeting her is awesome, gruesome, and exactly what I wanted. Unfortunately, Anna gets neutered far too quickly and that’s when all my problems started. Why did Blake decide to water down Anna so quickly? Such a shame.

(minor spoilers ahead!)

Most of the novel truly does read like a Supernatural episode. What works the most are Cas’s friends – his little circle he comes to know and love. They are fun and not at all the stereotypical group you’d expect from a traditional YA novel. I had some ‘Scooby Gang’ nostalgia going on big time. Even the romantic bits break most of  the normal YA tropes which is a breath of fresh air. Until you realize that Cas and Anna have feelings for one another. That bit lost me as well.

Two things disappointed me more than anything else. Why was everyone so okay with Cas doing what he does? He’s a freakin’ kid whose dad died killing ghosts. Why would his mother so mutely stand back and watch her son continue such violence, particularly at such a young age? Did not ring true to me at all. I know I’m just supposed to suspend belief, but I couldn’t.

Also, why wasn’t this book more frightening? I’m not sure that’s Blake’s fault at all. Maybe I’m just not moved by horror stories? Scary movies are nearly un-watchable, but I haven’t been horrified by a written ghost story in a seriously long time. I want to be scared silly!

I did love the book’s ending. I’m glad that Anna went down with the house – only seems fitting. Blake’s writing was also great, her pacing superb from page one, and she genuinely has some awesome plot moves. I’m mainly thinking of the flashback scene dealing with Anna’s past and how creatively she managed to pull that off. I think I’d have been more impressed if there had been more emotion involved. I wanted Cas’s mom to care more about her son’s well-being. I wanted the town to care more about all the deaths and disappearances – especially of the young kids. And I wanted that damn cat to survive!

Can’t win them all, I suppose. Anna is still a book I’d recommend to fans of YA horror and paranormal stories. There’s enough in Blake’s novel that feels fresh to entice those readers annoyed with so many cookie-cutter, predictable narratives running around in the world today. There’s also a fun amount of blood and gore for the true horror fans and a fascinating mythology.

I’ll gladly read the second Anna story in this duology. I am thankful that there’s only two novels. If Blake had decided to end after the first, I wouldn’t have been disappointed, but I’m interested to see where Anna ended up! Many other readers haven’t liked the second Anna as much which kind of gives me hope. I tend to like sequels when others don’t. Just one of my many weird quirks.

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Requiem by Lauren Oliver (And yes, there are spoilers!)

I finished the Delirium trilogy! I feel like I start so many book series and then never finish them. So to finally notch one completely off my list feels good. Plus, there’s a television show being made adapted from the novels. I’m rooting for the show – hoping it even outshines the books.

As many of you know, I wasn’t a huge fan of Delirium, but Pandemonium completely won me over. For the second book in a trilogy to surpass the first is rare – although most people don’t agree with me about Pandemonium’s clear ass-kicking of Delirium. So I had great hopes for an even better ending. But it was not to be.

Not that Requiem was terrible, not at all. I just was in like with it rather than in love. Mostly because of how Oliver managed to force Julian’s character firmly into a mere plot device and send him on his merry way as soon as was conveniently possible. I respected this love triangle until that ridiculous end. But I guess Alex was always going to win – so why bother with Julian?

And really, the end was the book’s biggest problem. So rushed – almost like Oliver wasn’t allowed to go over her 400 page word count without some sort of unfortunate consequences. Everything just ends and feels so forced. I was majorly disappointed that we have no clue what becomes of Hana despite her being one of the two narrative perspectives in Requiem. WHAT THE HAY?

Up until the end, however, I enjoyed most everything a great deal. I loved seeing the post-cure world that Hana was inhabiting and how the cure affected her specifically. And Lena didn’t even get on my nerves much, either. I didn’t see much character growth this time around for her, but at least she didn’t annoy me too much.

The action scenes were well done and suspenseful although a little too far and few between. Not that the novel reads slowly – I read practically the whole thing in a single sitting while I was sick this week. Oliver’s writing has come a long way since Delirium, in my opinion, and I appreciate her talents and hope to see more from her in the future.

Overall, I’d recommend the series if you want something easy and entertaining to read. Beware of the first book, but the next two make up for it! My biggest problems with the series as a whole was the lack of world building – most specifically, the history of this particular world. I’m still not certain how the US got to the point of curing its citizens of love or how the rest of the world fit into the picture. I’d have loved more back story.

Anyway, happy to be done and now ready to start a new series. I’m going to be giving The Mortal Instruments a read. I read Clockwork Angel last year and enjoyed, so now I’m looking forward to starting with TMI and working my way through all of Cassandra Clare’s backlog. With the movie coming out in August, I’ll be fully prepared!

Anya’s Ghost by Vera Brosgol

I’ve been gathering a large number of graphic novels recently in the hopes of growing more well versed in that particular literary genre. The Litwits are even having a graphic novel/comic themed month in September. In order to prep for that, I’m going to do my best to actually read some of my recent purchases.

Anya’s Ghost is the story of a teenage girl going through all the angst and self-esteem issues that plague today’s youth. Anya’s self-consciousness is also compounded by the fact that she’s Russian and trying so hard to be a traditional ‘American’. She’s spent years trying to lose her baby fat and her accent. Despite all her determinism, Anya has still only managed to make one on-again, off-again friend by the time she reaches high school.

As one faithful day would have it, Anya falls down a well. Yes, a well. Very ‘Alice and the rabbit hole-esque’. In the well she encounters a skeleton with a ghost attached. The ghost’s name is Emily and desperately wants to be Anya’s friend. Anya begrudgingly gives in and soon begins to benefit from Emily’s sneaky ways.

Somewhere along the line, however, Emily turns out not to be what she seems. And through this very unearthly lesson, Anya begins to see her life a little more clearly.

Loved it! Such a fun narrative made all the better by the gray-scale drawings. The illustrations have a very decidedly cartoon-esque appeal and Brosgoll expertly captures emotion and plot movement even in her drawings without exposition or dialogue. Her story is also incredibly unique. Emily could have been a very simple and underused plot device, but her ghostly nature and devilish past rose above all my expectations.

Anya’s Ghost also succeeds in remaining firmly grounded in reality despite the supernatural aspects. Anya’s struggles with her peers, boys, and family rang so true. She’s going through the terribly turbulent years where rebellion seems her only friend and who hasn’t felt that once or twice as a teenager?

This novel is one I’d suggest gifting to a teenager in your life – especially a female teenager. It captures several great morals without seeming at all preachy and manages to remain a super cool romp rather than an overwrought lecture. I loved Anya and the twisty ending so much. The drawings were spectacular and now I’m craving graphic novels like nobody’s business.

Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter

Long time no write! I’ve had a miserable go of it these past few days with the stomach virus from hell. But it gave me a ton of time to read which is the only positive side I could manage. And today I’m going to be reviewing a lovely little novel by Jess Walter that is coming out in paperback to a store near you soon – or maybe it’s already there!

Many of y’all discovered and loved Beautiful Ruins last year so I’m a bit behind the curve. When Trish at TLC Book Tours invited me to be on the tour marking the paperback release, I jumped quickly. So glad I did. I literally just finished about 5 minutes before beginning this post and so expect mostly an incoherent gush fest to follow.

Walter’s novel is hard to summarize. Next to impossible, really. It beings with a young Italian man returning home to run his family’s hotel in the nowhere village of Porto Vergogna after his father’s death in 1962. One day, Pasquale is attempting to build a beach on the rocky coastline to attract American and French tourists when a tall, beautiful, blonde film star arrives at his hotel. Dee Moray has been working alongside Liz Taylor on the film, Cleopatra, and has been sent away diagnosed with stomach cancer. When she meets Pasquale for the first time, a story spanning decades and many, many lives is set in play. That synopsis only scratches the barest of surfaces. But Beautiful Ruins is a book best read cold and discovered along the way.

For a book that jumps around in time so much, Beautiful Ruins sure does have some major flow. I’m really baffled at how seamlessly Walter is able to weave together the past and present along with various different mediums of narration such as chapters from fictional novels and plays scattered throughout the story. I like to think of Walter as a storytelling magician.

I was also taken with Walter’s ability to write both a deeply complex character driven story that happens to work as a page-turning plot as well. Achieving both is such a rare occurrence in books I read. And he’s able to make each of his many characters matter and to easily stand out as their own person. I always knew who I was reading about, could easily remember their back story, and yearned to stay with them just a bit longer. I think part of this success comes from Beautiful Ruins being such an effortlessly imagined novel. By that, I mean that the narrative played out in my head so vividly, almost like a movie. Jess Walter would make a fantastic screenwriter.

Beautiful Ruins is the best contemporary novel I’ve read in quite some time. It’s at once wickedly comedic and lyrically sad. It has so much to say about life, death, dreams, and the paths our decisions lead us down everyday. Walter has written a book meant to be read more than once with something new to be discovered upon each reading, I’m sure. It’s the kind of novel that bodes well as a gift for a new graduate or someone nearing death. Poignant, purposeful, and a hell of a ride!

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Thanks so much to TLC Book Tours and the publisher for a copy of the novel in exchange for my honest review. Check out the rest of the tour here.

About the Author

Jess Walter is the author of six novels, including the national bestseller The Financial Lives of the Poets, the National Book Award finalist The Zero, and Citizen Vince, winner of the Edgar Award for best novel. His collection of short fiction, We Live in Water, has just been published by Harper Perennial. He lives in Spokane, Washington.