Supernatural lit is at a high right now. Still riding the Twilight wave, authors and publishing companies are trying to cash in on the current phenomenon. (True Blood fans should be delighted.) Tantalize is young adult literature (YAL) that interlaces vampires and werewolves into modern day settings. Smith explains her mythology well and with short chapters, the plot moves swiftly.
Quincie is your average teen who loves/lusts after her best friend, a hybrid werewolf, Kieren. Unfortunately, her advances are dodged and she’s left increasingly frustrated. On top of that, the family restaurant is in the midst of reopening with a new vampire theme and no chef to speak of. Quincie is bound and determined for the restaurant to be a success, to profess her love to Kieren and to ignore her uncle’s vapid girlfriend. Unfortunately, not everything goes as planned.
I liked Tantalize at first but about two-thirds into the book, it became predictable and frustrating. Quincie has her mind focused so hard on the family business she stops paying attention to the things that really matter: school, Kieren, her family. She’s so self-absorbed at times that the reader wants to reach out and smack her, along with several other characters. Her uncle is so absorbed in his own issues he doesn’t bother to comfort his niece after the death of a loved one or pull himself away from his Gothic girlfriend. It seems his input is only to create more conflict and frustration in Quincie’s life and his girlfriend seems like a waste of space. He reinforces her new love for wine, despite being underage. Quincie even says later on:
“I woke up beneath Bradley’s cape on the frayed floral sofa in the break room at about 7 a.m., feeling every inch like I’d just eaten a full-grown goat with the fur still on. Fully sober for what seemed like the first time in weeks, which was wretched” (222).
Kieren is also a source of frustration – he’s spoken of quite a bit but seems increasingly absent as the text goes on. He is only trying to protect Quincie but a large part of me can’t help but think if he’d done something different, she wouldn’t have wound up in the concluding situation. Bradley, on the other hand, fluxes between adorable and far too forward.
All this being said, I did like Tantalize. The characters were flawed, which I love, and despite the constant frustration, I really wanted everything to work out for Quincie. Kieren redeemed himself towards the end (although he took his sweet time doing so) and Bradley made for a very interesting, albeit lackluster, villain. I loved that Smith created a new, intriguing mythology for werewolves and vampires but felt she rushed the ending, bringing everything together a little too neatly. Part of me, however, believes this may be the start (or the potential beginning) of a new series. In this case, I would be very interested to see how things work out for Quincie and Kieren.
A final note: the author’s note was wonderful – brief – but wonderful. I found myself more interested in Smith’s philosophy on writing Tantalize than the book itself and will most likely check out her work later on. But I’ll probably check it out from the library this time.
