Imagine your parents would leave you alone for more than a month to go on a holiday and leave you alone with no money to pay the rent. What would you do?
This happens to Amanda Grey in Alcy Leyva’s debut novel, And Then There Were Crows. Amanda has no job and does not know how she can gather enough money to pay the bills. So she gets creative and finds herself a roommate. Life in New York is expensive enough so a lot of people are willing like to share costs, including demons.
But before they could discuss any details, the demon tries to kill Amanda and she ends up killing him, which is exactly how she started the Apocalypse. Still in shock she learns that her neighbour Barnem is a Seraph—an Angel who’s job is to save earth from demons and prevent the Apocalypse from happening.
All of a sudden Amanda has a social life she never had before with many demons interested in her company and annoyingly, an angel who does not leave her side. Plus there’s also a new neighbour by the name of Donaldson who is moving in and he’s pretty interested in her. Well, why not live life a little if your soul is already doomed to go to hell?
Alcy Leyva does an excellent job with his debut novel, which is the first instalment in ‘The Shades of Hell’ trilogy. The novel is filled with sarcasm, which is incredibly enjoyable, with the combination of the difficulties of growing up and taking responsibility of your own decisions. You can easily dive into the intriguing and unique story, which addresses a large array of topics including politics, religion, anxieties and mental health, and how life is for a lone wolf.
As for our main character, Amanda realises that the only hope for humankind is to stop the bad guys with the way it all started: with herself. It can be easy to identify yourself with Amanda—she has to take care of herself for the first time in her life and she doesn’t know how to do that. To make friends? Impossible! How do others do that? To even trust them is challenging when your own sister does not have your back.
The story that unfolds is so incredibly fast-paced that just after three pages, you’ll find yourself already in the middle of the story and won’t realise how quickly you were able to get there! This story can be best described as a mix of Carrie Pilby and Dogma.
As for our author, Alcy Leyva lives in the Bronx, NYC, and he is a writer and teacher. He has a BA in English and Creative Writing and a MFA in Fiction from the New School. He likes to write personal essays, poetry, short fiction, book reviews and film analysis which have been published in Popmatters, The Rumpus, Entropy Mag, and Quiet Lunch Magazine. You can find Leyva on Twitter.
You can find And Then There Were Crows on Book Depository, Amazon, and other good book retailers. Available from July 3rd.
Will you be checking out And Then There Were Crows? Or have you read it already? Tell us in the comments below!
Synopsis | Goodreads
New York City has always been a big fat sack of stress for Amanda Grey. From turning herself into knots to evade rubbing ass cheeks with strangers on the train, to round-housing public bathroom door handles to stave off plague contaminations, Grey has always found the simple technique of avoidance best in dealing with NYC. Luckily, the one-bedroom apartment in Queens she shares with her parents has always served as a refuge from a world that’s too loud and too bright for Amanda Grey.
Of course, that’s all about to change.
When she inadvertently rents a room to a demon, Grey goes from a woman concentrated on her own personal demons to the woman responsible for recapturing the six Shades from Hell she’s unleashed upon the city. She manages to survive by accepting the help of Barnem, an antisocial seraphim who just happens to reside in an upstairs apartment and the demon she now shares her apartment with—and who oddly eager to help her vanquish the Shades, though she can’t be sure if he’s motivated by roommate loyalty or a secret plot to enslave humankind. Probably the latter.
Together the unlikely trio will have to face off with the (actual) devils of New York politics, break the curse of infomercial jingles, and figure out exactly how Grey has become the leader of a cult, all as Grey begins to realize that maybe the end of the world is exactly what her life needed. Now she just needs to figure out how to survive it.
