Mainstream-mini Review - Anna Dressed in Blood

Anna Dressed in Blood 

By Kendare Blake

Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead.

So did his father before him, until he was gruesomely murdered by a ghost he sought to kill. Now, armed with his father's mysterious and deadly athame, Cas travels the country with his kitchen-witch mother and their spirit-sniffing cat. They follow legends and local lore, destroy the murderous dead, and keep pesky things like the future and friends at bay.

Searching for a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas expects the usual: track, hunt, kill. What he finds instead is a girl entangled in curses and rage, a ghost like he's never faced before. She still wears the dress she wore on the day of her brutal murder in 1958: once white, now stained red and dripping with blood. Since her death, Anna has killed any and every person who has dared to step into the deserted Victorian she used to call home.

Yet she spares Cas's life.

~ My Review ~

I was a bit wary about starting this one. With so many gushing reviews, I didn't want to be disappointed when it didn't deliver. But, I'm happy to say that I enjoyed this story. It was not creepy, scary or even that dark. A bit gruesome on occasion, but I wanted a bit more of the scare factor. Then again, I read King before bed and sleep like a baby... What really saved this book for me was the creativity and that soft, underlying romance. I mean what's better than boy falls in love with a ghost right? Loved it. And Anna. Huge fan of her. There are multiple stories, unraveling at once. You want answers to all of them and that's what keeps you reading. I will definitely be picking up the next one very soon.

Mainstream-Mini Review - Partials

Partials By Dan Wells

The human race is all but extinct after a war with Partials—engineered organic beings identical to humans—has decimated the population. Reduced to only tens of thousands by RM, a weaponized virus to which only a fraction of humanity is immune, the survivors in North America have huddled together on Long Island while the Partials have mysteriously retreated. The threat of the Partials is still imminent, but, worse, no baby has been born immune to RM in more than a decade. Our time is running out.

Kira, a sixteen-year-old medic-in-training, is on the front lines of this battle, seeing RM ravage the community while mandatory pregnancy laws have pushed what's left of humanity to the brink of civil war, and she's not content to stand by and watch. But as she makes a desperate decision to save the last of her race, she will find that the survival of humans and Partials alike rests in her attempts to uncover the connections between them—connections that humanity has forgotten, or perhaps never even knew were there.

Dan Wells, acclaimed author of I Am Not a Serial Killer, takes readers on a pulsepounding journey into a world where the very concept of what it means to be human is in question—one where our humanity is both our greatest liability and our only hope for survival.

~ My Review ~

Dan Wells is a powerhouse. This book/series is intricate and fascinating. Talk about a good dystopian world. This one is spot on. There is so much contained in the pages of Partials, that I had a hard time slimming down the synopsis to explain it when someone asked. That being said, I was able to guess the "big surprise" much too early, which is why I have given four stars instead of five. 

That should definitely not deter anyone from picking up this book though! Admittedly, I have an over thinking brain and do not usually find any literature to be surprising. I did however, LOVE this story and characters. For it's genre, Partials is fresh and you will be swept up in this world. Dan Wells has done an excellent job of bringing a slightly darker and more realistic element to a dystopian society. Kudos to an "epic" author, on to the next book!