Anna Dressed in Blood

Anna Dressed in Blood
by Kendare Blake

Blurb:

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.

My Reaction:
I had reservations about this one, because I knew it was YA fiction, and that's not my usual fare these days.  I should've listened to my doubts, because this wasn't for me.  It's not terrible, but I wasn't enthused by it.  I didn't care for the characters-- or about them, really-- and... Well, almost everything that makes me hesitant to read more modern YA fiction at this point in my life?  It's here.  This book has demonstrated that my instinct to avoid was correct.  I might have liked this somewhat better when I was quite a bit younger, though I would've found the coarse language off-putting at that age.  Now, in my forties?  The language isn't a problem for me, but it's just not an enjoyable reading experience.  There may be exceptions, but I suspect that most modern YA fiction won't be to my liking, now.

The romance was inexplicable.  I guess it was based solely on looks, because they barely interacted, and what interaction there was didn't seem sufficient.  Then there's the horror aspect.  This version of horror is heavily reliant on gross descriptions-- enough to make me skip a few lines, because I'm not a fan of the disgusting, but probably a yawn for fans of body horror.  It's severely lacking in suspense and psychological horror, which I much prefer to the gross-out stuff.  

This book kinda-sorta stands on its own (if you're okay with major plot holes and abrupt, unsatisfying endings), but there's a sequel, and the ending makes that very clear.  I won't be reading it.  I can't see what could happen that would make it "worth it".  I'll just imagine my own sequel.  ...There.  I probably whipped up an ending I'd find more satisfying than whatever is in the actual book, anyway!

Near the Bone

Near the Bone

by Christina Henry

Blurb:

Mattie can't remember a time before she and William lived alone on a mountain together. She must never make him upset. But when Mattie discovers the mutilated body of a fox in the woods, she realizes that they're not alone after all.

There's something in the woods that wasn't there before, something that makes strange cries in the night, something with sharp teeth and claws.

When three strangers appear on the mountaintop looking for the creature in the woods, Mattie knows their presence will anger William. Terrible things happen when William is angry.

My Reaction:

SPOILERS FOLLOW!

Hm, not great.  The first half of the book lacked definite direction, which tried my patience.  There are too many detailed descriptions of what Mattie's doing, and none of it seems to matter (not to mention that I know what "doing X" entails, so don't really need to read a description of it).  Repeatedly, it would feel like something was finally going to happen-- someone was going to do something to set the story into motion-- and then it would all come to nothing, and we were instead meandering off on another tangent.  

The characters don't feel like real people to me.  The worst example of this is the disgustingly abusive William, who is nothing more than a hateful, one-dimensional caricature of a Bad Man with absolutely no nuance or depth to the character.  He doesn't seem to behave like even an evil person would.  He's just all over the place!  (Oh, and Mr. Evil is "Christian".  Of course.  Fits right in with everything he does, including kidnapping, murder, rape, shocking physical violence, and drug-dealing.  Here, author, have an eye-roll.)  

I also found it difficult to believe that Mattie would remember so little of her life before the kidnapping (or that she would recover so amazingly quickly from repeated brutal beatings).  I'm not sure how much of Mattie's story is supposed to be a mystery, but it's pretty obvious from very early on.  I understand that she's been brainwashed and literally beaten into submission, but I spent most of the first half of the book just sitting there willing Mattie to do something.  Maybe that was intentional, but it's so frustrating-- miserable to read.  

Then there's the creature... It's an interesting, rather bold choice to combine two such different types of survival stories-- one about a woman fighting to survive daily life with an abusive kidnapper, another about people trying to escape from an otherworldly creature-- but unfortunately, I don't think it works.  I see the intention, the parallels between the two very different "monsters", but it doesn't fall together as intended.  Instead, it feels like a jumbled mess with little in the way of satisfying conclusion.  (The final confrontation between William and Samantha was predictable and more amusing than emotional.  It felt very "written for the screen", in a cliché type of way.)

What bothered me most was the stupidity of the "three strangers" and the dialogue among those characters, once they come into the story.  It's just... completely wrong.  Surely real people don't act or speak this way, in these situations!  It doesn't ring true, and it makes the characters seem impossibly dumb and immature.  Was that the intention?  Who knows?!  

At about 52% I began skimming, but I read enough to follow the story until to the end.  It didn't redeem itself for me.  Too much of it makes no sense.  For instance, where did the creature come from?  Mattie and William have lived on the mountain for 12 years and the creature just appeared out of the blue in the past year, and yet Mattie says she thinks it's not an alien.  Okay... How would she know that?  And why not, since it just showed up one day?  Also, why was Mattie so shocked by the idea that there might be two of the creatures?  I mean, that's how these things usually work, isn't it?  Unless it was an alien just landed from another planet-- or the last of a species that lives for an exceptionally long time-- or a scout from another area (where, pray tell!)-- there must be more than one.  Right?  Animals, people, and "creatures" don't just pop into existence.  "A man needs sons"?  Well, a cryptid needs cryptlets-- cryptkits?  Whatever you'd call a baby cryptid.  

Meh.  Not a good read, in my opinion.