 |
| TITLE: Girl of Nightmares (Anna #2) AUTHOR: Kendare Blake PUBLISHER: Tor Teen PUB DATE: Aug 7 2012 |
"It's been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can't move on.
His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they're right, but in Cas's eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.
Now he's seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he's asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong...these aren't just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.
Cas doesn't know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn't deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it's time for him to return the favor."
His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they're right, but in Cas's eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.
Now he's seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he's asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong...these aren't just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.
Cas doesn't know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn't deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it's time for him to return the favor."
Rating:
“I love her.”
“She’s dead.”
“That doesn’t mean to me what it does to other people.”
I’ve been editing this review for several hours now. Most of my thoughts give out the entire story of the book. A few spoilers here and there would have been fine but where my thoughts were going? Well, it just might ruins the whole book those who haven’t read it yet. So instead, I’m going to keep this short but be warned, it still has spoilers.
I barely recognized the Cas I witnessed here in Girl of Nightmares. The Cas I knew from Anna Dressed in Blood seemed like a long forgotten shadow of a person over how Cas is behaving now. I get that he’s heartbroken, and I sympathize. But that doesn’t mean I’d let him wallow in his misery. I needed his spark back.
Girl of Nightmares has taken a whole new step – from a simple love struck ghost hunter to a world of people using the power of the athame for reasons they believe is right. It was a little unnerving to find that this story took a turn from hunting ghosts to finding a replacement for Cas as the wielder of the athame. How did we get to that point anyway? Is it because he’s defying the Order? But hasn’t he been doing that for the most part of his life? His dad did the same thing anyway and this is the only time the Order thought of doing so? Maybe I overlooked some parts of the book…
While Anna Dressed in Blood was spooky and yet filled with awesome action scenes, Girl of Nightmares is downright creepy and a little disturbing for my taste, with all the blood, sacrifices, cults, and did I mention blood? Yeah… like, lots and lots of blood! *shudders*
I think it was clear from the start that Cas and Anna’s relationship (if we could call it that) was doomed before it even began. His obsession over finding her again was a little too extreme, but I can’t deny that he’s the ever determined Cas I once knew [and I still admire him for that]… it just threw me off a bit.
Let’s face the fact that a love story between a ghost and a human, albeit a ghost hunter, is unlikely to have a happy ending. And although it was sad… I see this a fitting ending.
