He hits Cas on the head with a piece of wood and drags him inside the haunted house. The ex-boyfriend, both jealous and drunk, makes a fatal mistake. Not only does Cas get the scoop on Anna, he's taken to her dilapidated house with Carmel's jealous ex-boyfriend and two of his jock friends in tow. Carmel invites Cas to a big outdoor party where he's sure, with enough beer, he'll get the scoop on the local ghost stories. In order to find her, he enrolls in high school and immediately tracks down the school Queen Bee, a girl named Carmel.

In ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD, after dispatching a ghost in North Carolina with a special knife only he can wield, 17-year-old Cas is headed to Canada with his white witch mother to see about another ghost, one nicknamed Anna Dressed in Blood. While sexual content is just kissing, swearing of all intensities ('damn' to 'f-k') is a regular occurrence and there's some heavy teen drinking at a party (though with a designated driver). He suffers many injuries including a concussion, near organ failure, and bruises. Cas dispatches other ghosts with a special knife and learns their stories of how they died, usually violently. Hauntings show gory details of deaths, such as spilled intestines.

Cas' father had also been found dead, partially eaten, 10 years before. People unknown to Cas are found killed and partially eaten. Two of these teens are found dead, ripped apart with blood everywhere one is killed by a parent one is ripped in half by a ghost. Teens known to the main character, Cas, die gruesomely - three of them in the present, one in a flashback that includes fear of sexual abuse. It's a good fit for mature readers who are avid watchers of scary movies. With 'blood' in the title, you'd be smart to expect lots of it here, along with ghost scares. Parents need to know that Anna Dressed in Blood is the start to a horror series by Kendare Blake ( Three Dark Crowns) with a movie in the works produced by Twilight author Stephenie Meyer and starring Maddie Hasson and Cameron Monaghan.

Anna dressed in blood