By night, they fight in a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse. By day, they are friendly next-door neighbors. Neither of them know that their alter egos are archenemies. 

I’ve spent my life training in the family business of slaying vampires, but I’m tired of all the death. I want to prove we slayers can help society, not just break it.
I start my new life by joining the Magiford supernatural task force, which exists to protect humans and supernaturals from harmful magic.
There’s just one problem.
All of my teammates who work the night shift with me are scared of me since slayers are the assassins of the supernatural world. Worse yet, even though I’m doing my best at pretending to be a human during the day—a necessity as a lone slayer can quickly become a dead slayer—I’ve utterly failed to win over any of the humans in my apartment complex since I have the charisma of an overdue investigation report.
That changes when a handsome vampire moves in next door. Connor may not be willing to try any of my failed attempts at baking, but he’s charming and not afraid of me. Plus, he’s the first friend I’ve made who has the time to hang out with me after work.
Things are looking up, or they would be, except a mysterious and extremely powerful vampire has declared downtown his nightly hunting ground. I’m the only one on my team who can match him in a fight, something he finds endlessly entertaining. That isn’t a good sign for my general life expectancy.
My greatest goal might be to win over my squad, but if this vampire doesn’t back off I might not live long enough to achieve it.

‘The Lies of Vampires and Slayers‘ was exactly what I’d hoped it would be: light, fast fun, packed with action, seasoned with a little bit of angst and a sprinkling of snark. 

I loved that Jade, the young slayer away from her slayer family for the first time, is seen by her peers as an intimidatingly good fighter, but sees herself as an outsider of average skill with a lot to prove. She also suffers from cripplinng anxiety in social situations. The only neighbour she can talk to without sweating is the vampire who has just moved in next door. Vampires, she knows how to deal with. I also liked that she took the job in Magiford because she wanted to use her skills without having killing vampires as her main goal. 

The vampire was a little harder to like, but the chapters told from his point of view broadened the story. His background and motivation were revealed more slowly. He is a millennia-old vampire who is feeling jaded and burdened by his commitments to other vampires. Jade, both in her persona as the lone slayer on the Maigiford Magical Enforcement Taskforce and as his annoyingly bubbly and apparently human next-door neighbour, acts as a catalyst for change for the dissatisfied vampire, offering him both challenge and friendship.

A lot of the fun comes from the fact that both slayer and vampire are hiding their true identities, so neither realises that, by night, they are regularly in conflict with one another. 

The action scenes work. The monsters are creative and intimidating. The magic systems are engaging. The mystery wasn’t complicated, but it kept the plot moving.

Part of my enjoyment of the book came from its underlying optimism and hopefulness. It’s not cosy in the protected-from-all-nastiness sense, and it’s not a Romantasy. It’s a book about friendship and acceptance and the things that get in the way of both, that also delivers a decent mystery and some great fight scenes. 

The book is set in Magiford, a modern American city where humans and supernaturals live side by side. K. M. Shea has two earlier series (eight books in all) set in this city. I haven’t read any of them (yet), but it was clear that this is an environment the author has imagined in depth.

‘The Lies of Vampires and Slayers‘ is the first book in the ‘Magic on Mainstreet‘ trilogy. Although the book contains characters from earlier series which I hadn’t read, that didn’t spoil my enjoyment of ‘The Lies of Vampires and Slayers‘. The trilogy is a single story arc, so it needs to be read in order. I’ve already added the second book, ‘The Games of Enemies and Allies‘, to my TBR.

I enjoyed the audiobook version of ‘The Lies of Vampires and Slayers‘. It has two narrators, one for each point of view.