Review – Girl of Nightmares (Anna, book 2) by Kendare Blake (4/5 stars)

Reading Level: Young Adult
Genre: Paranormal
Size: 336 pages
Publisher: Tor Teen
Release Date: August 7, 2012
ISBN: 978-0765328663
Stand Alone or Series: 2nd book in the Anna series
Source: Swapped
Rating: 4/5 stars

This is the second book in the Anna Dressed in Blood Duology. It wasn’t as good as the first book but it still did an excellent job of wrapping up the story started in Anna Dressed in Blood and was very engaging.

Anna still plagues Cas’s thoughts months after she went to Hell to save Cas and his friends. Now she has started haunting his life and his dreams as well. Cas thinks something is wrong with Anna and that she is being eternally tortured. He talks his friends, Carmel and Thomas, into helping him find a way to save her.

This book doesn’t have as many creepy scenes and is not as much a horror novel as the previous book in the series. Still Cas’s journey to discover the origin of his knife is an interesting one and I enjoyed how he uncovered the past of his father and Gideon.

Cas is an interesting character and an engaging one. I love how he is kind of in love with death in general and is determined to uncover his father’s mysterious past. He’s a fun character to read about and I enjoyed him.

We barely get to see Anna at all in this book except for at the very end. I was really hoping that we would get to know her and understand more about her in this book, so I was a bit disappointed by her lack of page space.

Carmel and Thomas are great side characters and have a nice side story of their own throughout. I would love to read more about them in future books.

I really enjoyed the settings in this book. Our characters journey down from Thunder Bay to Minnesota’s North Shore. I love the North Shore and spend a lot of time vacationing there. It was fun to read about them investigating hauntings in Two Harbors and Duluth.

The story is less about ghost hunting and more about tracking down a society/conspiracy from Cas’s past. There is lots of investigation and research. Again not nearly as many creepy scenes. This book also doesn’t have that ghost hunter feel to it that Anna Dressed in Blood did.

The book does tie things up nicely. It was a bit rushed towards the end and Anna only gets a brief scene which was kind of disappointing; but I thought it ended realistically and was in keeping with the rest of the series.

Overall an excellent conclusion to this duology. I enjoyed the settings and the characters. I was a bit disappointed that Anna wasn’t actually in the story more. I also thought the ending was rushed and wished Blake had sent a bit more time tying the story up. This was an excellent duology and I can’t wait to see what Blake writes about in the future. This series is recommended to those who are interested in reading some excellent YA horror.

This book goes towards the following reading challenges:
– 100 Books in a Year Reading Challenge
– Paranormal Reading Challenge
– TBR Pile Reading Challenge
– Young Adult Reading Challenge