Review: Diabolical

Diabolical by Cynthia Leitich Smith

My rating: 3 of 5 stars



As the fouth, and seemingly final, book of the Tantalize series starts out…Miranda is watching her friends from on “high”. She discovers that her best friend Lucy has been accepted to a private, exclusive boarding school in Vermont with ties to a bigger School with the same name in the Carpathians.

Miranda gets word to Zachary what Lucy is up to and begs for him to rescue her. What’s “slipped” guardian angel to do? Well, head off the to academy with his protectee, Quincie, and her wolf-man, Kieran in tow. The plan, to call on the current Dracul to provide a letter of recommendation so Zach and Kieran can get accepted. Once in the academy they discover it’s ties to Lucifer and their inability to escape.

Whereas the previous book was just a battle of good vs. evil, Diabolical, is a clash between heaven and hell.

Have to be honest. Once the third book, Blessed, was over, I thought this series was done. Diabolical serves to finally tie the loose ends of Zach and Miranda. I enjoyed the story but it felt disconnected from the other 3 books. In this case, Smith took a detail from Bram Stoker and built a story around it…but it just didn’t feel organic to the first 3 books aside from the characters carrying over.

The writing and story were just as enjoyable as the previous books and I have to say that I loved the ending and Memo’s from Michael…I laughed my arse off! Overall it was a great story and a fun series. I will be curious to see where Smith goes from here.




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