Tantalize

With her chef murdered and her missing shape-shifter boyfriend the prime suspect, Quincie, age 17, has a month to open Sanguini's, a vampire-themed restaurant. There's just too much on her plate, which is the same problem that plagues this overly ambitious supernatural thriller. The stew of overdone plot twists and subtexts thwarts narrator Kim Guest's valiant efforts to save this doomed romance. After a suspenseful opening chapter, Guest finds few opportunities to vocalize Quincy's grief, worry, and fear. The campy atmosphere at Sanguini's undermines the serious murder mystery, forcing Guest to portray Quincie as a confident young woman more stressed about revamping the restaurant than by the genuine vampires invading the neighborhood. A good narrator can't spice up what should have been a tantalizing story. M.M.O. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine

March 5, 2007
Following her parents' death, Quincie Morris was left in her Uncle Davidson's care, and the fate of the family's Italian restaurant was left in hers. Now 17, Quincie, who narrates, and her uncle have renamed the place Sanguini's. They've remodeled it with a "vampire theme," which they believe will sell in their Texas college town since "vampires are a fringe population, and Austin is a tolerant place." A month before the grand re-opening, however, the longtime chef is mauled to death in the kitchen, and the murder suspect is a werewolf. Quincie finds this problematic, since her lifelong best friend and love interest, Kieren, is a "hybrid werewolf" who traces his lupine heritage to the wolves that roamed Ireland with St. Patrick. A new chef shows up who may be talented but is also spooky, with red contact lenses, pale hair and a menu featuring sweetbreads, blood sausage and baby squirrels in honey cream sauce. Best known for her Native American stories, Smith uses advertisements, newspaper clippings and menu pages to liven the pace, and creates palpable tension in the novel's second half. Quincie's story hews closer to the campy Buffy the Vampire Slayer
episodes (e.g., " 'You ate the police?!' I exclaimed") than to the elegant romanticism of Stephenie Meyer's books, but horror fans will be hooked by Kieren's quiet, hirsute hunkiness, and Texans by the premise that nearly everybody in their capitol is a shapeshifter. Ages 14-up.