Girl of Nightmares (Anna, #2) in SOS: Serious Overload of Series

Oct 13, 2011 Shannon marked it as to-read

Shelves: color-red, male-protagonist, novels, owned, young-adult, ghosts, paranormal-romance, korean-authors, asian-authors, bought-2012

Oh. My.

The cover is absolutely stunning.

Anna! Yay! :D

ETA: 5/1 - I like the new darker/less red cover and that you can see the creepies on the bottom better. I've also preordered the hardcover of this even though I get 90% of my YA from the liberry these days.

Can't wait to see it in person! ...more

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Feb 11, 2012 Steph rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: series-completed, author-웃, series-ended, age-group-ya-na, year-read-2012, series-final-book, sos-games-bsb-r6

Six months after Anna's sacrifice [in Anna Dressed in Blood] to save his life, Cas still can't let her go. It doesn't help any that he's still seeing her - only this time she's the Girl of Nightmares. She appears to him while he's sleeping and awake and each time he sees her being tortured. That can't be right though ... can it? He has to rescue her. Others aren't so certain, I mean think of all the people she killed.

"Tell me again why you're going through all this ... Why all this trouble,

Six months after Anna's sacrifice [in Anna Dressed in Blood] to save his life, Cas still can't let her go. It doesn't help any that he's still seeing her - only this time she's the Girl of Nightmares. She appears to him while he's sleeping and awake and each time he sees her being tortured. That can't be right though ... can it? He has to rescue her. Others aren't so certain, I mean think of all the people she killed.

"Tell me again why you're going through all this ... Why all this trouble, for a dead girl?"

"That dead girl saved our lives."

Cas is having a hard time and refuses to let it go. No one can convince him that Anna is where she is supposed to be. His continued obsession with Anna is throwing off his ghost-hunting game. He is still a bit leery of the athame, but that doesn't stop him from heading out of town when Daisy, one of Cas' tipsters, calls about a ghost killing bums in an abandoned factory.

His skin is black as a struck match, cracked and oozing liquid metal heat, like he's covered by a cooling layer of lava. The eyes stand out bright white. I can't make out from this distance whether they're just white or if they have corneas. God I hope they have corneas. I hate that creepy weird-eye shit.

Kendare Blake writing brings the spooky to life. The Suicide Forest scene was deliciously eerie. Anna is one of my favorite characters, so it was hard not having her be a bigger part of the story. However, we did get lots of answers. Answers to those burning questions that formed while reading Anna Dressed in Blood. And, we get to meet the infamous Gideon when the party travels to London. It was there that the book really became a fun read for me. Pre-London - Cas is moping, school is letting out for the summer, Thomas and Carmel are trying to snap Cas out of his funk, and here and there we get some wicked visions of Anna. Post-London - the group meets up with Jestine, who is like the female version of Cas, they get their game faces on, and the party really starts.

I would have liked a more evenly paced read, but I thoroughly enjoyed this spooky, romantic, dark-humor-filled duology and will recommend it to anyone interested in a good ghost story. And,I look forward to reading future books by Kendare Blake. [Rating ~ 3.5★] ...more

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Aug 07, 2012 Christal rated it liked it

Shelves: ya-and-na, urban-fantasy, shady-government-agency, ghosts, magic, male-lead, assassins-spies-and-mercs, death-as-a-character

Girl of Nightmares is the sequel to Anna Dressed in Blood. I wasn’t a die-hard fan of Anna, but it had an interesting premise, excellent world building, and a superb character in Anna. I didn’t dislike this follow-up, but I was expecting a more exciting read all around. It did answer a lot of the questions I had from the first book and I still enjoyed the characters of Cas, Thomas, and Carmel, but the plot took a while to begin and then wrapped up fairly quickly.

Cas changed from cocky and self- Girl of Nightmares is the sequel to Anna Dressed in Blood. I wasn’t a die-hard fan of Anna, but it had an interesting premise, excellent world building, and a superb character in Anna. I didn’t dislike this follow-up, but I was expecting a more exciting read all around. It did answer a lot of the questions I had from the first book and I still enjoyed the characters of Cas, Thomas, and Carmel, but the plot took a while to begin and then wrapped up fairly quickly.

Cas changed from cocky and self-confident to depressed and a bit mopey. It’s an understandable reaction to what happened at the end of Anna, but it drags the book down a bit. He doesn’t really want to interact with the real world anymore, and spends a lot of time alone at his house. His depression and Carmel trying to snap him out of it make up a lot of the beginning of the book. For the first 150 pages or so, I was pretty disappointed. I felt like nothing really happened. Even when Cas begins to have visions of Anna being tortured, the actual action takes a while to begin. Cas and Thomas begin to look for answers, but it feels like they are just running in circles. When they would ask Gideon or Morfran, they would tell them it couldn’t be done… but wait, I guess it can be done…but it shouldn’t be done! This happened over and over until an outside organization sends Cas a suspicious picture. It felt a little deus ex machina, but it got Cas to London and the real story finally began.

I really enjoyed the parts of the story in Europe; this was what I was expecting the entire book to be like. I would have been happy in our trio had been there the whole time. These scenes were well-paced and interesting, and had a pretty creepy part that takes place in the Suicide Forest. We finally meet the enigmatic Gideon and learn much more about the mythology behind the athame Cas uses. I especially liked the new character of Jestine; she was basically Cas’s female counterpart. She was feisty and interesting; I wish that she had been in more than just the back half of this book. I could see her and Cas having a unique relationship if Ms. Blake revisits this world in the future.

The final confrontation seemed a little too easy, but I was satisfied with the way the story ended. I liked that Cas received some closure about his father’s death, but appreciated that it wasn’t turned into a sappy ghostly reunion. My biggest gripe with this book was the lack of Anna. Yes, I know she was trapped in Hell but she is the most complex character in this duology and was barely in this book until the very end. I loved the scenes that she had with Cas in the last quarter of the book. She’s such a tragic but strong character; I wish we had had more time with her when she wasn’t suffering. I didn’t really buy into Cas and Anna’s insta-love, but their scenes together are sweet and being with Anna makes Cas infinitely more interesting. I wasn’t sure where Kendare Blake was going to take a love story between a ghost and a human, but she managed to make it satisfying without being unreasonable.

Even though I wasn’t smitten by this series, it was well-written with likeable characters and a complex mythology. The character of Anna alone makes it worth reading. I plan to watch for future books from Kendare Blake because her prose is quite lovely. Based on the things I did like from this duology, I would recommend it to other readers.

Originally posted at Badass Book Reviews ...more

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Nov 02, 2011 Nairabell rated it really liked it

Shelves: 4-star, teen-ya-paranormal, read-in-2012

It has been months since Anna Korlov opened a doorway to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it to save Cas Lowood's life. Despite being reminded by his friends of her sacrifice, Cas can't let Anna go and soon he is seing Anna everywhere. But this isn't the powerful Anna he remembers, this Anna is broken and tortured and Cas is desperate to find out what happened to her. His quest reveals secrets hidden in his past and leads him on a dangerous quest to save Anna from a fate far worse than It has been months since Anna Korlov opened a doorway to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it to save Cas Lowood's life. Despite being reminded by his friends of her sacrifice, Cas can't let Anna go and soon he is seing Anna everywhere. But this isn't the powerful Anna he remembers, this Anna is broken and tortured and Cas is desperate to find out what happened to her. His quest reveals secrets hidden in his past and leads him on a dangerous quest to save Anna from a fate far worse than death.

This is the final book of the Anna duology (after Anna Dressed in Blood) and honestly it was a little different to what I expected. I loved Anna Dressed in Blood and found it to be deliciously creepy and addictive, but something was missing for me in Girl of Nightmares.

I think part of it is Cas's desperate self-destructive quest to figure out what happened to Anna. As much as he loves her, he is completely unable to let her go and he quickly places himself at risk along with Thomas and Carmel, which is incredibly unfair to them. There is less ghost hunting and the action quickly moves away from Cas's mother and Morfran who were two stand out characters for me last time.

But enough about what I didn't like, here's what I did. The echoes of the events of the previous book are present in this showing that even ghost related things have real world ramifications. There are some creepy scenes but these are more towards the end of the book, particularly when Cas and his friends journey through the "suicide forest" which was disturbing to say the least. Once the action moves to the UK the action is compelling and I was glued to the page throughout.

The beginning is action packed and throws you straight back into Cas's life, while showing how Thomas and Carmel are still standing by his side. There were a few unexplored plot lines in Anna Dressed in Blood and this picks them all up and ties them together, deepening the world and managing to pull a bunch of surprises out of seemingly nowhere. This goes right back to the origins of the blade and how Cas's father became a ghost hunter revealing a whole new side to their world.

The ending was action packed and chock full of tension, going back and tying in tiny hints from both books to create a shockingly powerful conclusion. It's pretty much impossible to discuss the ending without spoilers so I will just say that the ending is unconventional but works perfectly within the world Kendare Blake created.

One last thing - if you haven't read Anna Dressed in Blood, don't read this! It is very closely tied to the first book and you'll have missed a huge amount.

All in all this was a good read and a great conclusion to the series.

Plot: 9/10
Characters: 8/10
Ending: 10/10
Enjoyment: 9/10
Cover: 8/10

Overall: 44/50 ...more

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Nov 29, 2011 Kristen rated it it was ok

Shelves: young-adult, horror

Review originally found on seriestracker.wordpress.com

Having just finished Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake, I find that I need to refresh my memory with what I thought of the first Anna installment because I found, the entire time I spent reading Girl of Nightmares, that I wasn't reading very scary stuff and I recalled Anna Dressed in Blood being pretty darn scary. So, here's how I started the Anna Dressed in Blood (AD in B) review: "Want to spend some time with a creepy scary ghost story? T ...more

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Dec 03, 2016 Charlotte (Buried in Books) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: urban-fantasy, young-adult, ghosts

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Jun 08, 2017 Midu Hadi rated it liked it

Shelves: reviewed, fantasy, second-in-the-series, last-one-in-the-series, premissing, 2012, read-in-2017, series-completed, work-book-bingo, read-in-june

I was worried that the sequel won’t suck me in as the first book had managed to do. I worried for naught; this book was as much fun and scary as the previous one. One thing that I both love and hate about this book is that Cas doesn’t sound like a teenage boy all the time. In places, he uses such poetic words about Anna. I also loved the gory decriptions that the author uses for when Anna shows up to show Cas how she is suffering. This part from the book showcases both the gore and the poetic pr ...more

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Jan 21, 2017 ☘KathyD☘ rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-romance-series, genre-paranormal, zz-2017, genre-romance, genre-young-adult, audio-audible, book-kindle, genre-fantasy, pages-300-399, genre-horror

I really wanted to love this book. Anna Dressed in Blood was a really creative idea that was executed just as well. The premise of this book was good, but the story was just off for me. I felt like it took a while for the plot to figure out where it wanted to go. Once it started to piece together, though, it was a bit anti climatic. ...more

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