Girl of Nightmares Review (aka an excuse to use Supernatural GIFs)

Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake
Published: August 7, 2012

Synopsis from Goodreads: Girl of Nightmares, the acclaimed sequel to Kendare Blake's Anna Dressed in Blood.

It's been months since the ghost of Anna Korlov opened a door to Hell in her basement and disappeared into it, but ghost-hunter Cas Lowood can't move on.

His friends remind him that Anna sacrificed herself so that Cas could live—not walk around half dead. He knows they're right, but in Cas's eyes, no living girl he meets can compare to the dead girl he fell in love with.

Now he's seeing Anna everywhere: sometimes when he's asleep and sometimes in waking nightmares. But something is very wrong...these aren't just daydreams. Anna seems tortured, torn apart in new and ever more gruesome ways every time she appears.

Cas doesn't know what happened to Anna when she disappeared into Hell, but he knows she doesn't deserve whatever is happening to her now. Anna saved Cas more than once, and it's time for him to return the favor. 

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

You don't understand how excited I was to finally get my hands on Girl of Nightmares. I read Anna Dressed in Blood over Christmas last year - yeah, I know great choice for a holiday book, right? - and I couldn't wait to read the sequel. But, me being a weirdo and liking my series books to match each other, I decided to wait until the paperback of Girl of Nightmares released before reading it. I thought it came out in June but somehow I read something wrong and it released in July. Don't ask how I confuse myself in these ways. I barely understand my own functionality sometimes.

Anyway, Girl of Nightmares definitely has a different tone from the first Anna book. The first book had ghosts and creepiness on practically every other page so much so that I actually wouldn't read in bed at night when I knew no one else was awake. Yes, I'm a scaredy cat, chicken, or whatever you wish to call it and fully I admit it. No shame there. I'm not usually one to read horror stories at all but when I read the synopsis for the first book all I saw was:

 

 Protagonist: "Cas" + Occupation: "Ghost Hunter" =

 The Only Logical Train of Thought:

 

 ...Oh Misha, strange, adorable Misha...

 

I'm sure you'd would immediately make the same connection in your head. Don't lie. You know it's true.

 

 

Back to the point, the sequel though was much different. Ghost hunting wasn't Cas's main focus anymore. He was heartbroken over Anna's sacrifice for him and his friends and even more so when she began appearing to him while being tortured in every imaginable way. Most of the book deals with Cas trying to figure out how to find Anna and how to help her. It wasn't quite what I was expecting after the first book but it held its own even without the amped up creep factor.

My favorite part of the book was definitely Cas's narration. He would take a scene that should have been horrifying and throw in witty sarcasm at the strangest times. It made for the perfect mix of drama, action, and humor breaks.

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 if they have corneas. God I hope they have corneas. I hate that creepy weird-eye shit. - Cas, page 63

 

Carmel and Thomas have their share of great one liners as well. Also, I have to say, they make a really cute couple though for a lot of the book, I couldn't really figure out if they were actually together or not. Then again, Cas was a little confused about that too so it's not a big deal. Still, they were super cute like Sam-lost-his shoe cute.

This book is everything a sequel should be. It shows the impact the events of the first book had on the characters and the ways in which it changed them. It's not just a repeat of the same kind of things that the first book had. A lot of just stuff happened is packed into these pages but it didn't get boring at all. And the end...

 

It was a really perfect ending. Kendare Blake has hinted that she might not be done writing about Cas and the gang yet but even if she doesn't, I will be completely satisfied with how this left me. So, if you like horror, action, all the supernatural stuffs, and romance with tidbits of humor thrown in for good measure, I strongly suggest you pick up these books. They're quick, easy reads but they're definitely worth it.