Jamie's Reviews > Diavola

Diavola is a fantastically fun horror read. There's really a double-dose of terror in this novel and I'm not sure which one is scarier – the haunted house or the toxic family vacation. (Okay, honestly, yes I do. It's hands-down the family vacation.)

I was a little worried at the beginning – I wasn't particularly invested in the story and I just couldn't get into it properly. Once I made it to around the 30% mark, however, things really picked up and I didn't want to stop reading. I finished the last 60% in one sitting and couldn't help but root for Anna the entire time – her family was truly awful.

The humor in this book is excellent but also kind of … relatable? realistic? Maybe people with non-exasperating families won't appreciate it quite as much, but as someone who once hid in a closet (it was a very large walk-in closet, to be fair) during a family reunion, I could totally relate to the snarkiness and dark humor that Anna used to cope during her Italian torture holiday. There's also a scene after Anna returns to her job in New York that is just comedic perfection, and it may or may not have made me snort-laugh when I read it.

As far as setting goes, this is the second book in the last couple of weeks that has made me want to pick up and move to Italy (the other was Christopher Golden's The House of Last Resort ) … but I will definitely not be buying or renting any old houses with dark and questionable histories, thank you very much.

And, ooh, that ending! The climax of the story is a nail-biter, for sure, and the epilogue was perfect. I'm not normally a huge fan of books that skip right from the action to an epilogue set years in the future, but this one was like a balm for the soul. You go, girl!

So, yeah, other than the slow start (which was probably just a “me” thing), this book was fantastic and certainly lived up to the author's editor's description of “delightfully unhinged.” If you like your haunted house stories served up with a large dose of family drama, you should definitely give this one a read. 4.65 stars, rounded up.

Many thanks to NetGalley and Tor Nightfire for providing me with an advance copy of this book to review.