Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

The Synopsis:
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 Thoughts:
I don't know about others, but after finishing reading Anna Dressed in Blood, I was a little questionable about where Blake was going with the story.  I had thoughts such as "Was there even enough to spin the story into a second successful book?"  I had my doubts.  There just didn't seem as if there was enough meat to the story for a second one.  Honestly, I would have been content with just the one book.  Why did there have to be a sequel?

However, I was glad to return into Cas's mind.  He was sarcastic and kick ass as ever and wholly entertained me.  For a moment in the beginning of Girl of Nightmares, though, I was afraid I was losing him.  I get that with the ending of Anna, he'd be all depressed, but he was almost this--dare I say?--New Moon Bella Swan.  I get it, Cas, you were depressed.  But don't mope around like a complete dodo mush-head and expect me to be okay with it.  It was a little uncharacteristic, I felt.

For most of the book, I had no idea where the story was going.  Expanding what I said earlier, I wasn't sure what else Blake could do with the plot.  Keeping this in mind, I did find Girl of Nightmares to be unpredictable, which is a great thing, except that in the beginning--mixed in with Cas's depressing mood--I had a hard time getting wrapped up into the story.  I was extremely curious as to where Blake would bring the story, but things were a little dull for me at first.

What I super enjoyed was the fact that it still held a 7 on the creepiness scale!  It wasn't as scary as the first one (or maybe this is just because I've grown a tolerance to these kinds of books) but, especially at the very end, my interest level was sky high and I had a hard time tearing away from the book because it was just that sick and adrenaline-filled.  It was awesome!  If only I had started reading books like this earlier, because it was great!

While the book got off to a shaky start, Girl of Nightmares did not let me down in the end.  I've not read many books in this genre, so I can't compare the book to others, but I suppose this series will be the kind of standard I will look for in other books of this kind.  I jumped into this series being a doubter of all things scary and creepy, and with this series, I came out a believer and lover of all things that go bump in the night.  Thank you, Kendare Blake!