Title: Girl of
Nightmares
Author: Kendare Blake
Series: Anna
#2
Narrator: August Ross
Published: 7 March 2013 by Orchard, 16 October 2012
by Audiogo
Length: 10hrs
4mins, 384 pages
Warnings: graphic
gore
Source: audiobook
publishers
Other info: I
really loved book one in the series, Anna Dressed in Blood. Kendare has also
written Antigoddess.
Summary : Cas Lowood is no ordinary ghost hunter - he's in love
with a dead girl. Her name is Anna Korlov. Anna Dressed in Blood. The girl who
sacrificed herself to save his life. Racked with guilt, Cas sets out to do what
he does best - hunt a ghost. But this time his aim is not to kill. He must
rescue Anna from the depths of Hell. But Hell is also home to a creature Cas
has battled before...Just your average boy meets girl, girls gets sucked into
hell story.
Review: Remember
Anna Dressed in Blood? Well, *SPOILER
FOR DRESSED IN BLOOD* she’s in a realm with the Obemann. Cas gets haunted by
the ghost of his ghost girlfriend. With the help of Thomas and Carmel and a new girl, Jestine , he gets information
about Anna from the Order and tries to find her, before she suffers a fate worse
than death.
I really liked Anna Dressed in Blood. Gory, great
characters, ghost hunting and fun. I was
looking forwards to this one.
I don’t normally listen to actual audiobooks read by a
person (I normally just let kindle text-to-speech read aloud to me on walks).
When I started this, I listened to the narrator’s voice and just thought “8
hours with this guy. Damn. His voice is annoying”. It grew on me after a bit,
but it isn’t the way I imagined Cas to sound.
There’s a distinct lack of Anna, despite the fact that she’s
in Hell. For a series named after her, you’d expect to see a bit more of her,
and I hoped there’d be a bit more because she’s really really cool. She was
very save-me when she was here, not quite as...Anna as she was in Dressed in
Blood. I also missed the focus on ghost hunting.
Cas wallows in pity about the lack of Anna a lot in this
one. It gets a little annoying. Thomas
and Carmel add a bit more realisticness, and add a bit of depth. Jury’s out on
Jestine-to start with, she’s a bit unlikable, but I think you warm up to her in
time. I liked seeing more of Thomas.
It did the creepy thing a bit better in this one. There’s a
scene where the team are going through a
forest with a lot of bodies of those who have commited suicide. DON’T TURN YOUR
BACK DON’T LOOK AWAY DON’T BLINK GOOD LUCK.
Quantum locked corpses chasing teens through a forest. Fun times. (Ok, they’re not officially quantum locked,
but that’s the vibe I got from them)
The climax added to the intensity, with powerful forces at
play and a lot at stake here.
The resolution, I have mixed feelings about. From an
in-book, plotty way, it’s perfect-it concludes nicely but not in a particularly
good way, reflecting that sometimes things don’t turn out the way you
expect. From a reader’s point of
view,it’s all “no why did you do that???”
Overall: Strength
2.5, more a 3 tea to a disappointing end
to a a duology that I loved the first part to.
