Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna #1)

Content Overview

Overall Content
Severity
4.7

Language

10.0/10

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

0.8/10

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

1.0/10

Violence, Weapons, Blood, Crime

10.0/10

Potentially Intense Themes

1.5/10

**As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

Anna Dressed in Blood (Anna #1)

Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father’s mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he’s never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

Yet she spares Cas’s life.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.

Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings.

My Opinion

4 out of 5 stars (4 / 5) I don’t normally read horror. I haven’t been into it for years. However, bookstagram and October will do that to me!

This book was oddly entertaining. It was gruesome and scary and I cringed many times. But I needed to know what happened!

I felt endeared to the MC for his young age and past and determination. He was admirable in many ways. Thomas came through as my fav for being brave and loyal when needed.

It was a ride, I have to say that! I do feel the details of the ghosts and the deaths were too much for YA. However, Blake portrayed teen life well so I would still label it YA, just with an advisory.

The romance was weird, the deaths were awfully detailed but other than that I was hooked! I loved that it was written in maroon ink, it was a great touch!

If you love very creepy, this book is for you! I can’t say I’ll read them often but I may just need book 2.

Detailed Content Review

Language 

F***- 14

H***- 23

S***- 28

A**- 12

B****- 3

D***- 32

Bas****- 4

Religious Cursing

J****- 10

Chr***-

G**- 15

L***-

Derogatory terms etc-

Dickiest of dicks 

Dick 

Whore

A-hole

Alcohol, Drugs, Smoking

There is a teen party with a beer keg. One young man is on his third beer. They leave and drive somewhere, drinking beer when they arrive. One is the designated driver (not drinking.)

A young man smokes a cigarette.

A young man smokes a cigarette. 

A young man smells of beer very early in the morning. He’s also drunk. 

Intimacy, Sex, Immodesty

*No LGBTQ+ aspects included*

A young woman’s moms boyfriend is attracted to her, corners her.  Sexual abuse is eluded to. 

A mother calls her daughter a whore. “What man will take you after you let schoolboys lift your skirts?” She orders her boyfriend to take a dress off her 16yo daughter so he grabs her, licks his lips and grabs at her dress. 

A young woman runs her hands through a young man’s hair and lightly kisses him. They kiss quite a few times. 

Violence, Weapons, Crime, Blood

A man’s body is found beat up, then stabbed with a slit throat. His body is found covered in vines, his jaw hanging open. 

A ghost is rumored to have killed 12 and injured 8.  Many ghosts have killed many people.

A ghost grabs a steering wheel and jerks it, the young man driving slits his throat and a dark oil substance creeps up the ghost’s face and down his chest. He then shrivels. 

A family hunts ghosts that kill, then kill them. 

A man shot his wife then shot himself. He is now a ghost. The ghost killed two people so a young man kills him. A ghost has a bent neck that’s purple. The young man stabs it as it wraps a rope around the young man’s neck. 

A woman and her unborn baby died when they were shoved down stairs by the husband. The woman’s ghost shoved a woman making her fall. 

One ghost/body was hanging by his neck in a cellar, the young man “gutted him” and was done. 

A young woman/body was found with her head almost fully cut off. There was so much blood that her white dress was red. Her ghost has killed 27 teens. 

A man previously killed his family using hedge shears, “stabbing and snipping.”

Stories tell of ghosts pushing people into the water or dragging them below. 

A ghost “tore (a family) limb from limb” heads and arms in a pile with bodies hung in the basement. 

A young man hits a young man over the head with a board knocking him out. 

A ghost is dripping blood. She plunged her hands through a window and grabs a young man, dragging him through. He’s cut up from the window. She plunges her hands into his chest and splits his body in two. 

Previously, a fathers body was found with bites and chunks missing. 

A ghost/young man talks to another. Then his body rips in half- replaying his death, and his head is twisted around. A young woman/ghost drips blood, he tries to stab her but she throws him across the room multiple times. 

A man slaps a young boy across the face. 

During a hostage negotiation, the hostage negotiator was shot in the spine and the perpetrator shoots himself in the head. A young man takes his knife to the ghost and slices his wrist to stop it from shooting, he then slices its arm and rib cage and all over its body until it dissolved into a black smoke. 

**SPOILER**A mother slaps her teen daughter in the face. She orders her boyfriend to take her dress off her (16yo daughter) so he grabs her, kicks his lips and grabs at her dress. She head butts him and runs. The mom grabs her hair and yanks her back. The boyfriend slaps the teen and shakes her. She breaks a vase on his head. The boyfriend tackles her and she falls. The mother takes a knife across the daughters throat, killing her. The blood seeps everywhere. The mom takes off the teens dress and wraps her in a blanket.

A young man grabs a knife and holds it to a young woman ghost. Another young man punches him.

A ghost/man has all his teeth loose, and sagging skin. A young woman/ghost holds out her arms and blood starts seeping through his clothes. His head lolls back, then back and forth wildly. It then snaps and he screams. A young man hears ripping as the ghosts intestines fall to the floor. Another ghost/body crashes through the wall and bares its teeth. 

The body of a man is found dismembered. The body is placed in a body bag where body parts are obviously disconnected from others.

A young man punches a young man. He holds a knife to another young man. 

Two young men have been murdered. Dark sprays of blood coat the walls. Their bodies have large bite marks taken out of them. 

A ghost/man has his eyes sewn shut. He is holding the tail of a family cat that he’s eating. A young man swipes a knife at him. The ghost strikes at him, then strikes his chest and the young man and a woman fall down stairs. The ghost fills up his chest like a balloon, then grabs the young man and breathes on him, making him numb and non coherent. 

**SPOILER** A young man slides his knife against a ghosts arm. Her black blood drips onto the floor. A man/ghost attacks a young man, the young man fights back and slides his knife in his side. The ghost pushes him into the wall. He throws a couch through the ceiling at people, then punches the young man into the wall, his ribs breaking. Blood pools around the young woman ghost. The young man sees a pair of legs under the tossed couch. A young woman hits the ghost man with an aluminum bat multiple times. A young man stabs it in its leg with a knife, but the ghost grabs the young woman, unhinges his jaw and bites the young woman. The young man stabs him in the cheek, twisting it.  A young woman grabs the ghost and throws him, then twists his head. He unhinges his jaw and bites her arm, a young man pries his jaw open with a knife and throws him. 

Potentially Intense Themes

An old woman/ghost is seen at a cemetery. She has stones where her eyes were. She hisses and melts into the ground. 

A young man watches a young woman/ghost. He talks to ghosts regularly. The young woman is corporeal and sometimes not. One man/ghost twists it’s head, bones snapping. 

After falling into a basement, a young man puts his hand on the wall and realizes there’s a corpse. He looks “darker and looser” and he knows he’s rotting, that the house is “digesting” him. A young woman ghost presents him with many ghost corpses. They’re “braided” and have bugs crawling on them. Some are missing limbs or teeth.

Four teens perform a spell.

**As an Amazon associate I earn from qualifying purchases. 

4 Comments

  1. This book sounds awesome! If you need me I’ll just be crying under my obscenely large TBR pile 🤣 it had me sold at kitchen-witch and the spirit-sniffing cat

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