Never Trust A Vampire

Strange Allies #1

by Vivian Lane

Second Edition Expansion!

One is a paladin whose touch burns vampires to ash. The other is a vampire who hates his kind. Can these natural enemies work together for the greater good?

The Agency recruited me at sixteen after I survived a vampire attack. At nineteen, I’ve put ghosts to rest, captured werewolves, and intervened with black magic all over the world.

When I sense a vampire at my cousin’s piano concert, I confront the bloodsucker, only to have him grab my cross pendant and swear he’s never killed a human for blood. I’m so stunned by his vow, I let him watch the rest of the performance, but not out of my sight until he’s driving away. Then he has the audacity to walk into The Agency to ask for my help rescuing children from L.A.’s vampire queen!

My boss surprisingly won't let me refuse even though this sounds like a trap. Company motto is the only good vampire is a dead one. What makes this guy different from all the rest?

Will Adam prove me wrong, or be my downfall?

This urban fantasy story is intended for readers 18 and over due to adult situations.

Genres: Vampires

131 pages, ebook

Published June 8, 2018

About the author

Writer of supernatural badasses.

A proud geek *cough*nerd*cough* who likes fashion, interior design, and sports, Vivian Lane is the author of the Children of Ossiria and Strange Allies series. She lives in California.

Reviews

[Cherri-Anne · Rating 5 out of 5]

Saving humanity one soul at a time 5 FANGS UP

He was quite simply gorgeous. Why did he have to be a vampire? Was he flirting? I was his mortal enemy! Court her properly, or she’ll never fall in love with you. Stars above…I’d do anything for that bright, brave young woman. WOOO WEEEEE! WHOLEY MOLEY DUSTIN' VAMPIRES! Trust me, paladin, this is one fangtabulous book that you NEED TO READ!! It has a paladin named Agent Seven & her Guide Amelia, a vampire named Adam & his human son Darius, and is stuffed full of everything that I think makes for a captivating & intriguing story! Like how I get to know & love Seven/Della and Adam almost intimately as this story is told in first person, but done correctly (in my opinion) by way of each chapter stating who's narrating. It's very witty, funny and in "true speech" meaning the slang & speech is written just as it would be said, conveying each character's personality, individualizing them to the point that you get to know each character based on their speech & thoughts alone. Even the different "accents" are sprinkled throughout! This is a unique & very cool feature that enhances & enriches the story by truly bringing the characters to life, making the characters seem so real! Vivian did this PERFECTLY!! I had read this 3 book series in its previous form and LOVED IT!! But this revamped version is BEYOND AWESOME! Vivian has been working hard to perfect the story by re-ordering it, rewriting parts, writing completely new ones, and just from this one book I can already tell that all of her thinking, planning and hard work is absolutely worth it!!

[Erin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was given an arc in exchange for an honest review.

This was such a wonderful book! I went into it not having any idea what to expect. I love urban fantasy, but that doesn't mean I will necessarily like all urban fantasy. This book exceed my expectations. The characters are very well written and the story was very intriguing. It's obviously the beginning of the series and there are a lot of potentials for both the future stories and the characters themselves. There is so much more I want to know and I cannot wait to read more!

If you like urban fantasy with a strong female character and supernatural characters, then this book is for you!

[Ms. Cyn · Rating 4 out of 5]

I got this from Instafreebies and although short I enjoyed the tete a tete that Adam and Della constantly have. Della does not seem like a 19 year old though. Perhaps because of all of the responsibilities she had forced upon her. There are many things that I question. How did the Agency find her? I am pretty suspicious of them. Why didn't Adam burn when he saved her life? What is with his friend Simon? Looking forward to the next story. Hopefull the details will be filled in more.

[Wanda · Rating 5 out of 5]

Meet Della better known as Agent Seven and Vampire Adams.
This series is fantastic.
It grabs you from the beginning and doesn't let go until the end.
Can not wait to see where Vivian Lane takes us to next.

[Valerie Jondahl · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good start!
I really enjoyed Della and Adam's story. The story grabbed my attention and held on until the end. I look forward to learning more about the mysterious Agency. I received an ARC of this book and this is my voluntary review.

[Jackie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. Can two different kinds work together to save everyone. A paladin and a vampire, what a combination. Great start to a series.

[Cranky - The Book Curmudgeon · Rating 3 out of 5]

**** 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.

[Rikudou Sof · Rating 5 out of 5]

Woa, too much suspense. On to book two.

[Emily Pennington · Rating 5 out of 5]

We jump right into the action in this book with Della chasing a were wolf through the park, tucking into a tight roll to dodge him, and coming up with … uh, dog poop all over her coat. For an attention grabber, that did it for me. When I stopped laughing, I continued reading… and it kept getting better!

Della got a call from her cousin, Charlotte. Since Charlotte was in town, they decided to go for dinner and catch up on family news. Returning to the hotel, Charlotte bumped into a very pale man. When he saw her face, he turned even paler! He stared and continued staring until they entered the elevator, as if he were trying to memorize her features! When Della left, he was still there and followed her out. When she turned the corner, she shoved him against a wall with a knife to his throat and told him to stop following and leave the woman he was asking about alone! Then she went on to meet her partner, Amelia, the one who had drafted her into the “world-saving business” where she went up daily against paranormal creatures.

Amelia and Della were currently investigating a vampire organization led by Juliet. Blood was going missing from the hospitals and homeless people were disappearing. Della was on surveillance but nothing much was going on.

Simon raced into the hotel and burst in on Adam, telling him he had found his wife – whom he had been searching for after being cursed for 500 years! The two men had known each other since 1750 and Adam was trying to calm Simon before he got his hopes up too high again.

Della was going to meet cousin Charlotte when she finished in the early morning and have breakfast with her. Charlotte told her about a man she had dinner with, although she didn’t think she would have time to see him again with the tight schedule her manager had her following. Della had bad vibes so asked her partner to do a background check on her cousin’s manager, Nicholae.

At the concert where Della would watch her cousin play in the orchestra, her senses came alive and warned of a vampire. She spotted him and touched his neck – part of her power was the ability to burn vampires with a touch. She made him follow her out so they could talk. He told her he was not there for a snack but had been asked by a friend to observe the pianist. He introduced himself – Adam! How did Adam and Simon fit into this mystery? Was Charlotte really Simon’s former wife from 500 years before? And who is Nicholae who had such tight control over Charlotte? Was Charlotte in some kind of danger?

I loved this book! The mysteries kept popping up, keeping the tension and suspense as the reader pressed on to find the “real” bad guy! I highly recommend this book and intend to get the next book in the series as well. Very enjoyable!

[Laura Hernandez · Rating 4 out of 5]

This books grabs your attention from the first page and does not let you go until you've reached the end. Well-written story with strong characters.



{I requested a copy for reviewing purposes and made no guarantee of a favorable review. The opinions expressed herein are unbiased and my own.}

[Carol · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was a really interesting book. It wasn’t the usual vampire book with the heroine falling for the vampire. She was a supernatural hunter and he turned out to be helpful to her on some of her hunts. There was plenty of suspenseful moments and quite a bit of action.
I would recommend this book as a good read.

[Norman Hirschman · Rating 5 out of 5]

A good read with plenty of action and humor as Della , a human who hunts the supernatural has to work with Vampire Adam The Agency #s policy has always been to kill vampires but for some reason they make an exception and Della has to work with Adam against Juliet the vampire who bit Adam in 1730. Sparks fly so it is a question whether or not he two can work together. well worth reading.

[Giselle]

ARCs can be requested here: [closed - other review opportunities found here]

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Love the character's voices.

[Gypsy Madden · Rating 4 out of 5]

Agent Seven (aka Della) is a paladin (monster slayer) who works for The Agency. She gets hired by a vampire named Adam to help him take out his evil master Juliet. Though Adam is handsome and charming and capable, Seven has trouble trusting him and the whole idea of being friends with him is laughable considering she’s been trained to never trust a vampire, even if he claims that he never takes human lives and works to help her take down monsters.

Think the Buffy the Vampire Slayer series, but with less. There’s no comedic, every day man Scooby crew backing her up. She does have a tech researcher with her named Amelia who we barely see. The personalities in this are bland, Seven doesn’t have the fun personality quirks that Buffy had, nor much of a backstory either. She is tough as nails, and bad ass, but nothing that really stands out from all the other tough slay-first, ask questions later female Buffy-wannabes out there in indie fiction. Adam is, yes, our Angel stand in, the hot vampire with a heart of gold, drawn to our tough slayer, mainly because he likes teasing and messing with her. Her trying to keep Adam at arms' length and sniping at him just because he's a vampire, does get tiresome over the course of the book. The villains were the usual standard cardboard villains (and Juliet is more than a little like Darla from the Buffy series), though I did like her life after Juliet where she went on mission after mission slaying monsters other than vampires. And I did like his Renfield (Darius). There was also this odd secondary story that the book opened on with this immortal friend of Adam’s who was convinced he’s found his destined mate reincarnated in one of Della’s friends and was determined to follow her around the country until she would accept him (which felt creepy and stalker), and then that plotline immediately got dropped after the first chapter and didn’t get mentioned, not once during the course of the book. I started wondering if I’d just dreamed that I had read that scene, or if I had read a sample from a different book and only thought it belonged with this one. And then it came back in the very last chapter of this story.

[Douglas Williamson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Our heroine is a paladin whose touch literally burns vampires. Our hero a vampire who hates his kind. Can these two natural enemies learn to work together in a greater cause?

At its base, this is another urban fantasy story with vampires, werewolves and other creatures of the night. Our heroine works for The Agency, an organization that attempts to moderate the threat they pose to humanity. Throw in a vampire with a heart and somewhat the same goals and you have a cross between Buffy and La Femme Nikita. Best of all? It works.

The world is well crafted, with a solid back story and plenty of details to suspend disbelief. The characters are likable (except, of course, for the baddies) and are true to their worldviews. And yet they also grow, learn and adapt throughout the story. There is an obvious attraction between our main characters which provides a very slow burn romance as well. Note that neither party will admit to real feelings by the end of this book, so don't expect a neat resolution. For that matter, while the story does not end in a cliffhanger, per se, it also does not end in a ribbon and bow. This is just book one of an ongoing saga and if you want to know the true conclusion, you have to keep reading the series.

That is not a problem for me. I can't wait to start the next one.

Highly recommended.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout for review purposes.

[Ann · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5
The writing style is not very engaging. Few word sentences that don't flow very well. That's mainly for the female MC who is this secluded and emotional detached. The alternated chapters from Adam, the male MC, are a bit better. This is one point I liked, that the different narrators had different voices/writing styles.
I also liked the relationship that developed between Seven and Adam, a bit of bantering, a bit of admiration, not so much her bitching. But all in all, it was too disconnected and felt unrealistic.
Example: Seven's devotion to her Mama in contrast to her anti-social behaviour as paladin. Adam being in the monastery for 25 years but not being a monk and then referred to as boy (being 30 in 1730 was middle aged). The lady vamp terrorizing LA but being chased from her compound by just the two of them...
Still, I was contemplating buying the next book...

[anie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Received from Xpresso Book Tour in exchange for honest review

I really liked reading this one. It's non stop action from the start to finish. The book pulled me in right away.

Agent Seven was recruited to the Agency, when she was 16 and since she is travelling world and removing supernatural threats. When she touches a vampire, she can literary burn him up.

Doing what she does, she has very bad opinion of vampires. She runs into one by accident, but he is very different from what she is used to. He is older, powerful and apparently not all that bad. The work together to save children. LA lead vampire has kidnapped children all over the place, to offer as fancy dinner. Agent Seven and Adam work together to save them.

There is a lot left open in the end. It's a great start of what could be really amazing series. I looked forward to reading more. :)

[Book Addict · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an intriguing start to this series...it sets the scene for what is to come and grabs the reader’s attention from the start sllbyge way through! Della is an intriguing character, I felt she was quite young to have a love interest who is quite old and to be doing what she does, but I am interesting to see how this works in the next book! Adam is interesting as the ‘defferent’ vampire and I really enjoyed reading about him and his son, who is human! This is a book full of twists and turns but I was left with a few unanswered questions..and I am interested to see what happens next!

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[T. · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received Never Trust a Vampire from the author/publisher (via InstaFreebie). The gifting did not determine the review/rating, which reflects my honest opinion. I found this slow-paced read to be somewhat lukewarm. A better-than-decent storyline and good characters, but there was no spark or theme to pull this to the ranks of a must read. Seven/Della seemed sullen and rude by default, which made it hard to sympathize with her character. I will say, this 3.5 story is worth reading and other readers may connect better than I did.

[Holly Bargo · Rating 3 out of 5]

Entertaining

If you enjoy snarky, young, badass heroines and suave, handsome heroes centuries older, then you'll like this story. The character archetypes aren't uncommon, although the vampire hero is a good deal more likeable than most arrogant jerks. The heroine is a stock character. Editing is okay, but capitalization errors abound. Note, the story (and romance) continue in the next book.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book, I didn't want to put it down. It had a great storyline with great characters and plenty of action and suspense as well as a little bit of romance thrown in, so what not to like. If you enjoy Kickass Heroines and vampires then this is definitely a book you will enjoy. I'm certainly looking forward to, book two of this series.

[Tanya · Rating 5 out of 5]

She is classed as a guardian as people like her to above and beyond to help save innocents. She is then expected to help a vampire but there is only one good vampire and that is a dead one. Why is she being made to help him? What is going on? See by reading

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Scarolet Ellis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Never Trust A Vampire by Vivian Lane is a wonderful story to read. It has vampires and werewolf in it, I fell in love with the story and characters.The charaters are strong and it is a wonderful story line to read.I recommend this to everyone I loved reading this story.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Deb · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author has written a book that puts the reader right into the scenes. You will find yourself engaged from the first page. I found myself laughing at some of the things the characters get up to and yet intrigued by the whole premise. I love strong women and this one doesn't disappoint. Their relationship was hot and I loved this book.

[Tiffany · Rating 4 out of 5]

Though I really don't like when books switch back and forth between character viewpoints, it actually helped to make this one enjoyable. When it ended unfinished, my jaw dropped, and I was enraged. lol I want more! I can't believe I have to wait until Sept to get more of the storyline. =(

[Justen Perkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved the story and am excited to continue reading to the next book of the series. I'm hoping it will end with an Hea at the very end.

I received a free copy of this book via Booksprout and am voluntarily leaving a review.

[Sheila Schwartz · Rating 5 out of 5]

To love or not to like

I love this series! Kick ass Paladin and the vampire who follows her to keep her safe! Some angst but nothing like it sounds is coming . Can't wait....but first Simon and Charlotte!

[Laura · Rating 3 out of 5]

strangers, to friends, to lover-- liked how they "took it slow" (in terms of UF books) and their banter was cute. OK read

[Lori · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a really good story. Loved the characters. There were lots of twists and turns.

I received a free copy of this book and am voluntarily leaving a review.