Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

I'm off on a trip to Canada, so no Follow Friday today!  Instead you get an extra review from my Cybils readings:

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.

Blake is back, and so are her wonderful characters.  Cas is really the star in this book, he grows up a lot and we learn a lot about who he is and what he stands for.  He also retains his snark, which brings just enough lightness to some pretty heavy scenes.  Thomas and Carmel are along for the ride, and it was sweet to see their relationship morph as they tried to find their way in it and around Cas.  There's also this great new character named Jestine who I totally loved.  That's good, because you really have to love the characters to love this book because most of it is all about them.  Plot-wise the first half of the book just didn't work for me.  It was very slow, very angsty, and not quite put together, the pacing a total mess.  The book really hits its stride about halfway through and gets better from there, but I don't know if it's enough to excuse the first part.  The first half of the book really felt like "middle book syndrome", while the last part of the book scared the crap out of me.  The other issue I have with this book is that it's definately a series book.  You can't read it without having read Anna Dressed in Blood or it makes little sense. 

Anna Dressed in Blood by Kendare Blake

Just your average boy-meets-girl, girl-kills-people story. . . Cas Lowood has inherited an unusual vocation: He kills the dead. So did his father before him, until his gruesome murder 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. Together they follow legends and local lore, trying to keep up with the murderous dead—keeping pesky things like the future and friends at bay. When they arrive in a new town in search of a ghost the locals call Anna Dressed in Blood, Cas doesn't expect anything outside of the ordinary: move, 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, but now stained red and dripping 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. And she, for whatever reason, spares his life.

Usually I’m not a horror person. I’ve never actually seen Jurassic Park all the way through in one setting. I’m a wimp. So I think you’ll understand when I say this book was, well, difficult for me. To be frank, it scared my pants off. I’m glad I read it, though, because along with being scary it was really, really good. Blake did very good character development. I loved how Cas, Thomas, Carmel, and even Anna grow as characters across the arc of the book. Although the ghost lore part of the story is well thought-through and laid plain for the reader there’s not a lot of backstory or obvious worldbuilding. The story doesn’t seem to need it, though. We see as much of the ghosts as Cas sees, and we know what he knows, so the unusual ghosts are exposed to us as Cas learns more of them. Blake manages to build tension without making it too heavy with her liberal use of sarcasm and witty one-liners from Cas. ***** SPOILERS ***** The only disconnect I could find was in between fixing Anna and finding the real killer. The tension could have been kept up a bit better by having a body be found before Anna was cured so the kids could wonder if she was leaving the house. Instead the letdown from freeing Anna let some of the air out of the book, making the end seem like it was racing instead of building. However, I really liked the romance that developed between Cas and Anna during and after her release from the curse. It seemed natural, appropriate to their ages and experiences, and very sweet. ***** END SPOILERS ***** In all, this was a very good book. I recommend it to anyone who wants a good scare with a love story sideline.

The Graveyard Book by Neil Gaiman

Bod is an unusual boy who inhabits an unusual place-he's the only living resident of a graveyard. Raised from infancy by the ghosts, werewolves, and other cemetery denizens, Bod has learned the antiquated customs of his guardians' time as well as their timely ghostly teachings-like the ability to Fade. Can a boy raised by ghosts face the wonders and terrors of the worlds of both the living and the dead? And then there are things like ghouls that aren't really one thing or the other. This chilling tale is Neil Gaiman's first full-length novel for middle-grade readers since the internationally bestselling and universally acclaimed Coraline. Like Coraline, this book is sure to enchant and surprise young readers as well as Neil Gaiman's legion of adult fans.

This Hugo and Newberry Award winning book is worth all the critical acclaim. The plot is a great one: a young boy escapes death by assassin to become the ward of ghosts in a cemetery. He has to endure figuring out who he is while also dealing with being raised by ghosts, knowing he is different, and not being allowed to leave the cemetery. Bod is a great character, too. I think he's totally believable as a person who was raised by ghosts in a cemetery. I like how he reaches out to Scarlett and the "unacceptable" ghosts. I also liked the drive in Jack, although I did feel that his storyline was left unresolved. Silas and Miss Lupescu are great guardians, and I love how Miss Lupescu is the typical English "horrid babysitter" while breaking the stereotype because she's a fighter interested in the occult. The only other female in this book, Death, is intriguing because it is not often you see death personified as female, but the mysterious "Lady on the Grey" is seen as the overseer and ruler of all the ghosts, yet she remains mysterious and aloof so all the mystique of death is still intact. This is a difficult balance to find in a book that goes so in depth about the afterlife. I do wish we had seen more of the Owens because they didn't seem very parental, but I think this is because we didn't really see them in parental stages in Bod's life, so I'm ok with it. In all, the book was pretty perfect, and I wouldn't hesitate to hand it to any twelve year old I know.