My Little Pocketbooks: Review: Girl of Nightmares

Girl of Nightmares
Author: Kendare Blake
Series: Anna Dressed in Blood (Book 2)
Genre: YA
Publisher: AudioGO
Release Date: August 7, 2012
Audiobook: 10 hours and 3 minutes
Narrator: August Ross

Source: Purchased from Audible.com

Book Description

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.

Review

I read book one (Anna Dressed in Blood) last year and thought the story idea was great but the audiobook execution was just ok. Nothing to write home about. So for the Spring Sequel reading challenge, I listened to this audiobook with hopes of the interesting story continuing. But...nope. It didn't happen.
Without giving anything away, book two (Girl of Nightmare) picked up with Cas constantly thinking, seeing and worrying about Anna the ghost from book one. The story is 60% Cas fretting in some way about Anna. All of this worry takes him on a journey to try to bring her back from the other side. Yes! The other side of death. With his new friends in tow, Cas goes on this baffling journey for the remaining portion of the book.
If you know my reading likes and dislikes, then you know it's all about the ending for me. A great ending can redeem a bad book. But this ending was.....how should I say.... a pointless waste of time. I went through all of this with Cas to get Anna back and that was how it ended? That was it! The ending was so quick that I felt there was way to much built up for...nothing!
Something about the narrator reading in the slow, monotone voice did not add to the adventure and emotional roller-coaster Cas was going through. He really took the fun of this book away for me. If I had to cast this book I would have picked the amazing Kirby Heyborne from Rotters (audiobook).
I have to say that I was extremely disappointed with this second and final installment of the Anna Dressed in Blood series. I was looking for something more with the conclusion of this sequel. I would have loved something that gave everything we have went through with Cas and Anna some kind of purpose or reason. SOMETHING!! ANYTHING!!