Slow beginning but it took some twists and turns that I was not expecting and turned out to be a decent read! ( )

I recommend this book for fans of Twilight and similar vampire novels, but I believe it to be a little better. The leading lady is not a whiney brat and has gone through a lot in life that gives her a pretty mature outlook. Though the book feels a little rushed in the third and last part, it was still entertaining and a good read. ( )

Has Stephenie Meyers totally ruined your appetite for young adult vampire stories or star-crossed teen lovers or hunky ethnic werewovles like she did for me? Well, don’t despair! I’m about to introduce you to a genre-blending fantasy novel set in Austin, Texas that will restore your faith in the undead. Let me introduce you to Tantalize, Cynthia L. Smith’s homage to food, Bram Stoker’s Dracula, and Shakespeare’s Romeo & Juilet.

Quincie P. Morris is like your every day regular teenager if that teenager’s best friend was an Irish-Mexican hybrid werewolf and she stumbled upon a murder at her family’s vampire-themed restaurant. Quincie is struggling with her feelings for best friend Kieren, who will soon be leaving to join wolf pack, as well as trying to reopen her late parents’ bankrupt restaurant with her slacker Uncle D. Things get really complicated with Quincie’s growing attraction to the new chef, who is wooing her into a world of wine, sensuality and vampirism.

With endless amounts of humor, shape shifters, vampires, and a serial killer on the lose, it is needless to say this is not your regular cold, dreary, Washington State-based horror-love story. Tantalize is a thinking reader’s horror novel that you must simply take a bite out of. ( )

Quincie's family restaurant has become all the more important to her since her parents death, the restaurant is a second home, its staff a second family. So with the restaurant failing it is given a makeover, a vampire theme, but not everyone is happy with the theme nor the type of people a theme like that will attract. But Quincie has other worries, head chef and surrogate grandfather Vaggio has been murdered.

Kieren, Quincie's best and only friend, not to mention first love, is about to embark on a werewolf right of passage, the outcome of which being Keiren's absence from Quincie's life, forever. With so much loss in her life it is little wonder that Quincie soon makes friends with Henry, the newly hired head chef of her family restaurant.

Tantalize offers a smorgasbord of murder, mystery, unrequited love, vampires, wine and deliciously seductive food that will change the way you eat forever. An exciting story of a girl changed by her experiences, and yet still determined to hold on to who she is. A story where the good guys don't always win, the bad guys are able to destroy everything and sometimes not everyone gets a happily ever after. This is one supernatural series with bite. ( )

There were things I guessed about this book, and things I didn't. The ending was not what I'd hoped for, but I suppose it had to go that way, maybe. There were a number of unanswered questions at the end though that do bother me, and I would have liked a bit more closure on them (without being too spoilery, what happened to everyone who ate the squirrel?) ( )