AUGH! *indecisive flailing* FEELINGS...MIXED! Ugh that is the worst. I was expecting this book to be crash and burn awful, but instead it ended up including some interesting elements that I liked...in a confusing mess of a story. I'll give Accidental Demon Slayer one thing, though - it was off-the-charts weird, and I will take off-the-charts weird over paint-by-numbers mediocre any day. 
 So the premise of the book isn't super original: mild-mannered preschool teacher Lizzie Last-Name-I-Forgot discovers on her thirtieth birthday that she is a demon slayer from a long line of demon slayers in her previously unknown biological family heritage, and is dragged into the unseen world of magic and demons and shit because it's not safe and all the demons want to kill her. Lizzie must learn to embrace her powers and shed her conservative ways, and also there's a sexy magic dude, yadda yadda, shenanigans ensue. Pretty boilerplate stuff. 
 However, rather than take it the grimgritty leather-and-Hot-Topic urban fantasy route, Fox decided to quirk this premise the fuck up, and so we have The Accidental Demon Slayer. Here, Lizzie is introduced to the magical world by her long-lost biker-witch grandmother, decked out in skinny jeans and chaps and rhinestone-studded eyelashes, wielding magic in the form of Smuckers jars full of roadkill. Her support team is a coven full of old biker-witches with names like Ant-Eater, Crazy Frieda, and Sidecar Bob, who operate out of a biker bar, and later a deserted riverboat. Here, the local werewolves call the trailer park behind a closed-down Shoney's "home", and psychic battles of will between witch and demon are fought in a plastic shed or a dumpster, whichever is most convenient. 
 Also there's a talking fucking Terrier. I have no idea why talking, yappy dogs are a Thing, but they're obnoxious as fuck and need to not be. 
 So I mean, I've never read about old biker ladies fighting shit with roadkill and using the bond between them to protect a thirty-year-old demon slayer lady, and I think that's a pretty rad concept. The presence of so many women, period - especially in mentoring roles - is really unusual for the genre, as is the general feel of good will towards them. Yes there is one Alpha Bitch who appears briefly as competition for The Man, and yes, there is a lot of conflict between the biker women and Lizzie that is really bizarre and kind of unreasonable and I'll get to that, but by the end of the book, Lizzie revels in the camaraderie that the biker witches provide, and she's looking forward to the promise of meeting her love interest's sisters. So yeah, lots of ladies, minimum competition, liking that a lot. 
 The Biker Witches are also unabashedly sexual, which is kinda neat. I mean, it seems to be played to freak Lizzie out initially, but they're never ashamed of or shamed FOR it, so woot. And let's be real here, having women over the age of like thirty-five in a PNR book is rare enough, so rowdy raunchy biker grannies? Dunno if you'd see that anywhere else. 
 So that's cool, I liked that in concept, and I liked where the story ultimately went. The problem is that I have to keep breaking out that word - "concept". I liked the ideas presented in Demon Slayer a lot, but the execution was super rough. So much of the story, the world, the characters, were just terribly defined. It felt like I was reading the story in a tumble dryer - there was so much shit going on and flying around and not a whole lot of it made sense. I felt like I was missing bits and pieces that would have helped make things more cohesive - character motivations and world-building shit and general context. I'm usually all for being dropped in a world without any expo-duction, but that was just not working here, for anyone. 
 Lizzie's grandmother, for example, barges her way in to Lizzie's home and freaks her the fuck out. Without any sort of sensible preamble whatsoever, she locks Lizzie in a closet and starts throwing around jars full of roadkill because that's magic in this book and Lizzie needs protection, and ok that's all well and good, but you know what would be better and more helpful? IF YOU WOULD TAKE A GODDAMN MOMENT AND EXPLAIN THIS TO YOUR GRANDDAUGHTER SO THAT SHE MIGHT COOPERATE MORE FULLY AND NOT THINK THAT YOU ARE A CRAZY PERSON. 
 Then a demon attacks and Lizzie's powers activate and the two women go on the run, and there's a bunch of shit that it would help not just the reader to know, but again, LIZZIE to know to ensure her cooperation, and still the grandmother holds out, because "oh such danger! There's no time!", which is the laziest of excuses. Really, it's because it's not Time for us to understand the ~mysteries~ of Lizzie's past, and because so much of the conflict in the book hinges on Lizzie's ignorance, and our ignorance of what she is supposed to do, so that they can break out the deus-ex-powerset. It's just so much frustrating contrivance. 
 The character development suffers from this problem, too - arcs that feel contrived and forced instead of organic... 
 Full review at You're Killing.Us