Published by: Tor Teen on October 17th, 2011
Genres: Horror, Paranormal
Pages: 316
Format: Paperback
Source: Purchased
Goodreads
🌟🌟1/2
Synopsis: 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.
Review:
I've had this book on my TBR for a really long time, like for as long as I've been blogging, which is 5 1/2 years, but I only recently got a copy of it. I decided to read it last month because I thought it would be a creepy story, perfect for Halloween. I don't scare easily, so I was hoping that this book would scare me. I really wanted a scary Halloween read.
I've had this book on my TBR for a really long time, like for as long as I've been blogging, which is 5 1/2 years, but I only recently got a copy of it. I decided to read it last month because I thought it would be a creepy story, perfect for Halloween. I don't scare easily, so I was hoping that this book would scare me. I really wanted a scary Halloween read.
Unfortunately, the book didn't scare me, although the strongest aspect of the book was the setting. The way the story was told was very creepy, but I felt no chills, no reason to keep turning around to see what was behind me and no real feelings of fear and panic. In a book like this, those are the things I look for and in this case, I actually think it was the characters that weakened the book for me.
I couldn't really connect with Cas or Thomas or Carmel or any of the other characters in this book and I think that was the book's biggest problem. I guess I shouldn't have expected to connect with a ghost killer, but I was hoping. The simple title of "ghost killer" caused me to suspend reality a bit and that threw me off. I mean, logically I know ghosts are already dead, you can't actually kill them. I do actually believe in ghosts and I have seen them before, but Cas (and his father's) job of hunting & killing ghosts was definitely a struggle for me to accept & deal with.
The character development was also not as strong as it could have been and I think that was another reason that I couldn't really connect to the characters. I usually connect to well rounded & well developed characters and with the exception of Anna, I didn't feel like the characters in this book were all that well rounded or well developed. I actually really liked Anna though and she was definitely the most interesting character in the entire book. I was super curious to figure out how she was murdered and thankfully, we got that answered in this book.
Final thoughts: Aside from Anna herself, the characters were not well developed. The setting was creepy though. This book was just not my cup of tea.
I recently read this one, and while I really enjoyed it, I get what you mean. A few scenes aside (the basement scene was awesome,) there was a limit of actual horror here - and Anna herself was such an AMAZING character, that I feel like she should've been used to better affect.
ReplyDeleteI had high hopes for this book too, since its basically scream SUPERNATURAL!!! While it started out really well for me, it quickly went downhill with the romance :/
ReplyDeleteTasya // The Literary Huntress