New Review! Never Trust A Vampire (Strange Allies #1) by Vivian Lane, 3 Cranky Stars

Never Trust A Vampire by Vivian Lane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

**** 3 Cranky Stars ****



First off, know that I received an advanced copy of this book. The only thing I went by with was the blurb and no other info about the book. Had I known that this was only 169 pages long, I would have lowered my expectations a little bit.



Maybe.



The start was so promising with Delia being introduced as a “paladin”, a human who has the ability of killing vampires with just one touch. Living a double life, this nineteen year old young woman worked for a super secret agency hopping the globe in pursuit of vampires who preyed on humans, as well as trying to live a normal life pretending to be a college student for the sake of her mom.



Then she meets Adam. An ancient vampire who was the exact opposite of the ones she hunted at night. For the first time since she accepted her new life, she didn’t know what to do and how to react to this creature she had been trained to hate. What’s more, she was developing strange feelings for him the more they spent time together.



Adam sought her help in order to destroy his maker risking his very life by exposing himself to the people who can kill him. But the enemy of his enemy was his friend, right? Also, his curiosity had been piqued by this slip of a girl and he found himself being drawn to her over and over again.



Sounds good, right? OK, keep on reading.



The action sequence was also good. Very Underworld-like. Only Selene wasn’t a gun-wielding vampire but a katana-wielding paladin. The first battle sequence was quite exciting and primed me up to a promise of an even more thrilling follow-up scene which I thought was surely coming soon.



Only to find that it wasn’t to be.



What followed next was, shall we say a courtship(?), between the two unlikely characters. It was like the author tried to build up their budding romance rather than throwing it up to our faces while saying “here you go! This is not insta-love!”



Fair enough.



Then the plot started to follow the initial path and I thought to myself “Here we go, brace for it!”



Then it ended.



…At 73% in…of a 169 page book.



The rest of the book consisted of teasers from book 2, book 3 and book 4. Honestly, I didn’t even read them. Maybe I would after today.



What began so well just fell flat for me, it was unbelievable. There were so many plotholes, like what are paladins exactly? How can one be born with it? How many are there in the world? Who trained Delia to fight? How long did it take her to be considered one of the best when she’s only 19? Who formed the agency? Who funds them? Who the heck was Simon and why did Delia think he was just human when he obviously wasn’t? AND did Adam actually use the toilet?!?



Ok, enough with my ranting. As I’ve said, I should have looked up this book first before going in blind as I normally do with my book reviews. Maybe, just maybe, my expectations wouldn’t have been set sky-high by that promising blurb. Don’t get me wrong, this was a promising book. If a good editor or even betareaders had a crack with it prior to publication, it would have been a star.


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