GIRL OF NIGHTMARES is a sequel to the one book which managed to surprise me - ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD - written by Kendare Blake. It was published in the summer and instantly become a best-seller.
You all know, how much I loved Anna dressed in Blood and I just couldn't wait to read the sequel. Cas & Anna's story is so unique that you just get hooked immediately.
Six months past since Anna dragged Obeahman to the Hell with her to save our ScoobyDoo gang. Six months Cas dreams about her. He mopes around and misses her. Carmel and Thomas are trying their best to take his mind of her but everything complicates when Cas starts to have nightmares about Anna being tortured in Hell. So he decides to take the most dangerous journey of all and bring her back from the Hell to be with him. But will he succeed?
Oh Kendare Blake, thank you for bringing this story into my life! I have fallen for Cas and Anna's story fast and hard. I couldn't think about anything else for a while. It's so different compare to the novels and young adult books on current market. It stands out! Firstly of all, it's dark. Very dark. This is not a normal love story where a boy meets a girl and all is lovey dovey! This is a story of love between The Living & The Death. Between The Killer & his future Victim. This is a story from the paranormal world of ghosts.
As soon as I have finished Anna Dressed In Blood I knew that this is the one story which manages to surprise you . Especially, when you expect cheesiness and always-returning love triangles between species. That's how they make money these days. Everywhere you look. TV dramas, films, books.. But...This is an original within them.
Instead you find a girl who was cursed and killed by her own mother and now she has become a killer against her own will. We have a boy who's heritage is not a trust fund, but the ability to kill ghosts. But he falls in love with the ghost he supposed to kill. If you expect Happily-Ever-After, you won't find in this book.
Girl of Nightmares is so much darker that the first book. There is torture. Fights. Magic. Voodoo rituals. The Suicide Forest. An a secret society of the descendants of the Druids who's goal is to kill ghosts and send them where they belong. All these elements will glue you the pages and you wouldn't be able to put the book down. You will want to find the answers to your questions: Will Cas save Anna? Will they get the chance to be together? Will Cas survive?
Although the main subject of the book is the goal to find a way to save Anna from the the torturous hands of Obeahman, we get to meet new characters. Jestine - who is the replacement for Cas and seems to know a little bit more than him which of course irritates the hell out of him. We will learn more about The Order who forged Cas's athaem. They are dangerous people who do not care where the ghosts go. For them Cas is only an instruments. He should not have his own will and decide which ghost deserves to be killed and which doesn't.
And of course, our ghostbusters are just normal teenagers driven by their hormones, so we will see arguments. Struggle to cope with responsibility. A strain on relationship and the dynamic within our trio. And of course there is the fact, that Cas's one true love is living in the Hell of doom.
Again, Blake breathed life to Cas's character in her unusual witty way. Although I fear that Cas lost a little bit of his sarcastic view of life and there is a lot less of his witty commentary I enjoyed in the first book. But that must be part of the story. He is heartbroken and stressed. Of course he needs to be more serious.
But I have found this book equally enjoyable. Again very relatable in the way the characters talk and think. Normal but abnormal in the same time. This book is entertaining. Spell-bounding. Dark. Brutal. Merciless. Cool. Eye-opening. But also beautifully heart-breaking.
A perfect sequel to the first book. Although I have recently found out that Kendare Blake will not write anymore books in Anna's series, she managed to write a perfect ending to this story. And even though I was a little bit heart-broken by the ending, I thought it was just a pure perfection. One in a billion stories.
Yes, the end of the story can be open to a possibility of writing another sequel, so I contacted the author on Twitter and was left with a great answer. "It's the Last. Unless Cas tells me different :-)" I so hope that Cas will scream and fight in the true nature of his character, because I would love for him to get his own happy ending.
All in all, I have loved this sequel. To be honest, it was the best sequel in a book series, I have read so far. Kendare Blake managed to keep the level of her previous writing and gave us another wonderful insight into Cas's wonderful paranormal world.
CONGRATULATIONS MS BLAKE, another beautifully created and executed story.
Couple of quote to give you taste for this book:
“Every time I question him about the feasibility, he smiles at me like he's Yoda and I'm just a dumbass without the Force.”
“Jesus. I have become the thing they call the third wheel.”
“She crossed over death to call me. I crossed through Hell to find her.”
“In the sixth row of the theater, in the third chair in, Anna winks at me. Or maybe she just blinks. I can't tell. She's missing half of her face.”
“Everyone seems to know more than I do, and being on the shallow end of the information pool is starting to piss me off.”
“It’s true what they say about answers only leading to more questions. There will always be more to find out, more to learn, more to do.”
“This is weird. There's a dead woman in front of me like dozens of other dead women I've seen. But this one is a queen, and a famous one. If it's possible to be starstruck by the dead, then I guess that's what's happening.”
“I’m just saying it doesn’t always have to be spirits and magic. Sometimes hauntings are in your mind. It doesn’t make them less real.”
“I want to get some sleep, so if there's something mind-numbingly disturbing you want to show me, can we just get it over with?”
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