Third Sentence Thursday: ANNA DRESSED IN BLOOD

I love games, especially ones with rules that I can retain (card games are the bane of my memory-impaired existence). Today's game is Third Sentence Thursday, and the rules are simple: "Take the book you are currently reading and post the third sentence of the third chapter. Feel free to share one or two of the following sentences, if you’d like."

I'm reading Anna Dressed in Blood, by Kendare Blake. I just started it last night, and tore through a good 3/4 of the novel. I've been wanting to read more paranormal YA horror/thrillers, and this book definitely fulfills my requirements.I like how there's plenty of gore, but it's not gratuitous. I also love that the "monster" in the book is complex, though the revelation of how Anna became both ghost and monster wasn't quite as complex as I would have liked.

The third of the third:

"Recently, since we really started moving around, she’s developed this hobby of intensely researching each new place we live."

It's interesting how isolating a sentence can highlight a weakness in a novel that you might gloss over when you're reading chapters at a time. In the case of the above sentence, the narrator, who is a nomadic ghost-hunting teenage boy, is talking about how his mother deals with their frequent moves. But reading over this sentence, I wonder why she's researching the places. It doesn't have anything to do with the reasons for their moves. They're going where the ghosts are, so does his mom want to know a lot about each new town?

I went back and the next two sentences sort of answer the question: "She says it makes it feel more like a vacation, to know places where she wants to eat and things that she wants to do when we get there. I think it makes her feel like it’s more of a home." Well, which is it? Vacation or home? What I'm getting at is that I feel like focusing on these few sentences highlights a problem in the novel which I hadn't noticed before. The mother's characterization is a little fuzzy, if you examine it closely. But, if you're reading fast, absorbed by the plot, you don't really notice this weakness in the novel. I'm curious to see if in playing this game in the future, I'll notice weaknesses I overlooked in most of the books I'm reading, or if some will appear stronger. 

In any case, I'm really loving the book, and look forward to finishing it tonight. For more third sentence posts, head on over to Proud Book Nerd.