Review + Giveaway: Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

Book Description via Goodreads:

Hardcover, 336 pages

August 7, 2012, Tor Teen

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.

Source: Alexis & Tor Teen (Thank you!)

My Thoughts:

Anna Dressed in Blood ended with Anna dragging the Obeahman to hell. Like all things on earth, this decision had consequences. Cas remained tough but post-Ana, his strength was tested to the extreme. Gone was his dark-veined goddess and girlfriend. He had the burden of seeing Anna suffer through apparitions. Despite everyone’s protests and advices, Cas continued to search for Ana. Without Ana, Girl of Nightmares was different from the first book. It became less of a romance and more of an adventure – a grim but hopeful one.

Thomas and Carmel’s relationship bloomed. Carmel, the queen bee, has proven to be the helpful, curious supernatural believer. While Thomas remained himself – shy, conscious and weird. I enjoyed reading about these two. Although they weren’t official (yet,) I hoped that they would finally realize that they were good together and messed up apart.

Cas must be prepared for big changes and challenges. As it turned out, not everything he knew and believed was real. In a time when friends might become foes, he must endure the consequences of his decisions and the attacks through the chinks of his armor. The guilt and worry was weighing him down. To add to all this baggage, he discovered an important truth about his fate as a ghost hunter. Cas is only human – one with an ambitious plan. Can he defy the laws of nature and save Anna?

Filled with shocking revelations, gore and betrayal, Girl of Nightmares will not disappoint. Blake artfully drew the lives of the couple through struggles – emotional, physical and psychological. She also developed the characters so well that I found myself being pulled deeper and deeper into their lives and getting attached to them.

The ending was not what I expected at all but I have to admit that it was perfect. Just, bittersweet and satisfying, it left me at peace and wanting more (even though I know that there won’t be more books from this series.) There was a moment when I couldn't take it anymore and had to stop because I was overwhelmed with my emotions. Blake had the capacity to make me react and make me feel so strongly about her characters. I loved that.

Girl of Nightmares is a touching, bittersweet and unputdownable paranormal adventure that has the right ingredients: angst, romance, horror, action and surprise, all blended in Blake’s flawless prose. I highly recommend this series to paranormal romance readers and horror readers!

Rating:

Giveaway

Now, thanks to Alexis from Tor Teen, one of you will win a finished copy of Girl of Nightmares and an Iphone skin with the cover photo!

Rules:

Follow Fragments of Life.
Open to US/Can. *but if you have a US/Canadian addy, you can join.
You should be at least 13 years old.

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