Installment four in Cynthia Leitich Smith's gothic series returns the reader to the format of book two, which, for those who haven't read it, means that the story is told from multiple points of view. For the first time, Kieren gets to 'speak,' along with Miranda, Zachary and Quincie. Yes, that's right. Miranda, my superfav (hint: this is sarcasm) is back.

The story is just as readable and fantastical as the previous ones. If you enjoyed them, I imagine you'll like this one too, especially since you'll actually get a happy ending. Unfortunately, the story is marred by numerous plot holes. Honestly, I think this would have been better had she ixnayed the happy ending.

So much of what happened here is not believable within the context of her own universe. For example, why is Miranda in heaven? This of course, I knew before, and was not entirely cool with, but mostly accepted. Now, though, she's sitting in the Penultimate, a sort of purgatory for Heaven which I'll talk about more later, surrounded by all of these people she killed. What really made me question Smith's decision here was not so much the evidence that Quincie was a completely freaking awful person/eternal, but the fact that not one of her victims is really mad at her. In every case, she saved them from a terrible fate one way or another. Bull.

Along a similar vein, how does Harrison end up in Heaven? This seems like the equivalent of the belief that, no matter what you've done previously, if you're killed after confessing your sins, you get heaven. Umm, why? The one plus of more Harrison in the book was finding out that he is super gay, which was kind of amusing.

The frame story, where they're going into the school to save Lucy, also continually seemed fabricated. Lucy's a plot point and that's all there is to it. The parts that really didn't make sense were at the end, which means I can't be especially specific. I just want to state for the record that what happened to Kieren and Zachary at the end was completely absurd. Especially Zachary. In what way does that make sense? Argh!

Okay, I want to end my review with something more positive, so I'll go back to the beginning of the book again. As I've already mentioned, Miranda's chilling in the Penultimate, where she can watch over whoever she wants to via a device called the monitor-com until she's ready to pass on to Heaven. (For those who are interested, this is very similar to a vision of the afterlife I wrote about in a short story. Funny that.) The setup is pretty cool, and I do love theories of life after death. ( )

I was looking for a good paranormal book to review when I spotted Diabolical by bestselling author, Cynthia Leitich Smith. I was in the mood for something diabolical, so how could I resist? I didn’t realize at the time that this novel is part of the Tantalize series, which I hadn’t read. It worked well for me as a stand-alone novel, so no worries if you haven’t read the rest of the series. Angels, demons, werewolves, vampires – oh my! Read the rest of my review at http://popcornreads.com/?p=2778 ( )

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. ( )