Audio Friday

Girl of Nightmares by Kendare Blake

Read by August Ross

Summary from Goodreads:

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.

Confession:

When I first read Anna Dressed  in Blood a few years ago, I was very happy with the ending and didn’t feel it needed a sequel.  I wanted more stories about Cas, Thomas and Carmella, but they didn’t need to include Anna.  Even with the second reading, I was very satisfied with the ending, so I was intrigued to see where the story was going to take us in this second book.

I liked that Cas was haunted by what happened to Anna and that he was worried about where she went.  The fact that she starts haunting him doesn’t help.  We do learn more about his athame and why he is able to send ghosts onto where they need to go.  The mythology surrounding his family and the secret society that they belonged to was very interesting.  The trip to Britain was also interesting and it was fun to finally meet Gideon, Cas’s mentor.  Somethings happen that are pretty scary in this book as well, not as scary as the first book though.  This plot is less about the horror and more about the past and how it influences the present.

August Ross does a slightly better job with this book than the first.  Maybe I just got use to his voice so it was a little bit less annoying.  He does do British accents pretty well, which helped.  I don’t think I would avoid books that he narrates, but I would consider reading the book instead.

Overall, a nice sequel that ties up some loose ends from the first book.  I still feel like the first book didn’t need a sequel and I would still like to see the trio have other ghost hunting adventures, but I did enjoy the story.