This review contains minor spoilers for the book. Nothing big, but if you like to approach a book completely blank, you may want to skip this.
Like his father before him, Cas Lowood travels around the country and lays restless and malevolent ghosts to rest. He and his Wiccan mother rarely stay in one place for too long, and Cas makes very sure not to get too attached to any of the locals, as he’s just going to pack up and leave as soon as he’s done hunting and killing the local ghost legend. With every ghost he lays to rest, Cas becomes more experienced. He hasn’t told his mother (who would naturally freak out), but his ultimate goal is to track dow the spirit that murdered his father.
Now Cas is going to Thunder Bay in Ontario, to kill the murderous spirit the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood. Brutally murdered while on her way to a school dance in 1958, Anna Korlov haunts the boarding house where she used to live, wearing the blood soaked dress she died in. She has killed countless people, yet the locals always seem to find a rational explanation for why the dead people went missing. In Thunder Bay, Cas as per usual tries to stay detached and aloof, but before he can even get properly settled in, it seems he has made both new friends and jealous enemies. Carmel, the most popular girl in school (the best person to tell him all the pertinent gossip) turns out not just to be a bitchy queen bee, but actually very nice. Thomas, a geeky telepath with a witch grandfather insists on helping Cas, even when he strenuously denies needing any.
Of course, Mike, Carmel’s jock ex-boyfriend is less enthusiastic about the new guy getting cozy with his girl and he and his friends trick Cas out to the haunted house where Anna is supposed to stay. The jocks want to lock Cas in the abandoned house as a joke, but their actions have terrible consequences. Cas survives, Mike is less fortunate. Why would Anna Dressed in Blood, who’s supposedly killed more than seventeen teenagers, not to mention a slew of vagrants and homeless people, suddenly spare Cas’ life? He can’t understand it, and determines to get to the bottom of Anna’s tragic death and the possible causes for her cursed afterlife.
My fellow Cannonballer scotsa1000 reviewed this about a month ago, and wasn’t all that impressed. My full review is here.
I’m glad you enjoyed it — it seems I stand alone in my dislike for it. My book club enjoyed it and thought it was a pretty scary ghost story.
I liked the ghost story aspects. I liked trying to figure out which of the many paranormal fantasy series the author was inspired by (and it’s quite clear that Buffy was one of them, no matter how pissy Cas was about it). I did not like the romance between Cas and Anna. The hints of something possibly happening between Carmel and Thomas was fine, Carmel needs a nice sensible boy instead of a bossy and controlling jock in her life.
I will probably read the sequel, but am not rushing out to track it down.