A very witty fantasy read but a little slow at times. I really enjoyed it though and got a few funny looks from my husband and dogs when I laughed out loud.

Sometimes things just grab ya by your ass...
Completely dysfunctional Bronx girl finds there are more sucky things to life than the life she had lived so far in her isolated world. This starts off simple with trying to scrounge up money for rent of her family's apartment she is suppose to be taking care of while her parents are away. There's a demon spitting crows that are spit out of the would be murderers mouth that answered her room to rent ad that she managed to kill before he killed her and the demon from one of the turned crows she ends up renting to. There a whack job angel that has been hanging around that doesn't seem like anything you would want from an angel then it goes from there. The author catches humanity at its worse in a laursonic manner to jab at the worse of New York superficiality One part perfectly represented what I find most loathsome about modern society and it could work as a real life situation anywhere in the country or world now. Situations have arisen that are identical with the same lack of concern outcomes actually causing death to people and animals just because people were more concerned with getting likes on social media. This excerpt stuck with me:
Behind him, a woman—her blood-soaked hair plastered to the side of her head—climbed out of the passenger seat and limped over to the hood. Her foot was bent off to the side, dragging along the concrete. She was sobbing. “Uh. Not really. But, Barnem―”
“Really? It’s like white people rapping and doing really bad Caribbean accents. Actually, never mind that, never mind. Don’t try to change the subject.”
The woman slid herself over to the driver’s seat. She started calling out, “Bailey, oh my god, Bailey,” as smoke crawled out of the smashed engine.
“Humanity’s been screwing this world up since the cave paintings which, in my opinion, and I’m allowed to have it, weren’t really that good.”
The bloodied woman banged on the window. A small crowd was gathering, but everyone was too busy choosing which filter would bring out the plight of the woman better.“But the Shades? The Shades are going to tear this place apart. If you haven’t been paying attention, they’re already at work, Grey, fucking up the already fucked up. They bring out the absolute worst in your people by hanging around. The animal carcass thing? Only petty stuff. Only one of them blowing off some steam. You haven’t seen anything yet.”
The woman snatched a selfie stick from a young couple trying to frame themselves correctly with the wreck and used it shatter the rest of the glass. Diving in to hug the man crumpled on the steering wheel, she checked his pulse and started screaming,
“And it’s because of you, Grey. All of it. No matter how many times you deflect or make jokes or polish it up with some half-assed philosophy of yours. You’re wrapped up in this now.”A news crew from the pet massacre swooped in alongside the car. They asked the woman how it felt to lose someone so close to her. She told them that he wasn’t dead. The reporter spun back to the camera and promoted a later segment about how nine out of ten women are in denial about failed relationships. I heard a vlogger nearby critiquing what she was wearing at the time of the crash.I watched as street performer started piling into the gawking sea of humanity to take advantage of the crowd, making it impossible for the ambulance to drive in.
But, the story is funny also anda good wild ride

A funny but a little exhausting read. The plot is meandering but the cast somewhat saves it - the characters are strong and unlikeable and yet you still root for them. My biggest complaint is that the book is so unnecessarily long.

Amanda Grey just wants to save her family home. Living in a small New York apartment, her parents not only left her alone, but left her an immense amount of money to watch the house while they're gone. As a twenty something year old woman, this shouldn't be a problem, after all she loves being by herself anyways. That is, until she gets months behind on the rent. That's when things start to pile up on her. It becomes just another thing to worry about, after attacking her, a man disintegrates into crows before her eyes.

She then meets a demon, and an angelic being, and must go off of her adventure to save the world before the crows can spawn worse things around the city. Although I like the characters and the idea of the story, I just couldn't keep my attention on it. The writing was great, I just think that they story wasn't as attention grabbing as I originally thought it was going to be.

I did, however, like how gory the book was. For a young woman, she gets jumped a lot by demons, and in the first person viewpoint, she must defend herself using whatever means necessary to protect the planet, and humanity as a whole. I liked that there was kind of a cult aspect to it, alongside the angels and demons, but like I said, I just couldn't get into it.

That being said, I do think it has the potential to have a lot of fans. Just because I didn't love this book specifically doesn't mean you won't. If you think you'll like it, definitely give it a try and check it out.

Thanks for reading!
(Radioactivebookreviews.wordpress.com)

You will laugh with this book. That's a warning. If you like to read in public transportation, that is something that you may want to keep in mind.
There is pretty much something for everyone, a wild romp of a book that will keep you guessing right up to the end.

I fell in love with the title. That’s it. But the plot was intriguing so I decided to give this one a try. And let me tell you, that it went well!
I enjoyed the reading, I enjoyed it a lot, even if the setting wasn’t of my liking, and the story wasn’t, at the end of the day, so intriguing. But I fell in love with the MC and the “WTF is this-ness” of the entire book, that I kept on reading and enjoying it because it was… well, it was… I don’t know which word use here. It’s original, it’s peculiar, it’s strange, in some part is genius, and for most of the time, it’s absurd. But not in a bad way. Absolutely not.

So, if you are in for a challenge, and you want to read about not your everyday heroine, well, that’s the right book for you!

Rough and unpolished. And dog and cat heads on a wire? Seems to be for shock value and gore, rather than for plot. I'm out.

Dnf'd after the first chapter lmao

I thought I'd give this more time, but "more time" became over a month, and my desire to read this has actually decreased, so I've decided to dnf it, because really, I'm not going to read this. It's not really all that good, and I'm just not in the mood.

“Well, Grey. Hell is other people.”

This book was the definition of chaos.

I honestly didn’t know how I felt about it, and really still don’t.

We begin with Amanda Grey, a smart-aleck shut-in in NYC who – in need of a roommate – ends up with a literal demon as a flatmate and inadvertently releases the Shades of hell.

What I didn’t understand from the get-go is why Amanda was being held to task for these actions, mainly by Barnem – the seraph who lives upstairs. She defended herself from being attacked by a crazy guy, and for the rest of the book was pretty much blamed for it.

I was a fan of Amanda’s narrative voice. It was funny and sassy, and I even liked the somewhat-erratic nature of it.

I fist bumped my reflection which, unsurprisingly, looked ashamed to meet me halfway.

That aside, what frustrated me about Amanda was that she didn’t really do anything for most of the book. It often felt like these characters were just floating along in a vacuum, and it was uncertain as to whether this was meant to be a parody, or just didn’t quite connect. It just didn’t feel as though Leyva created a through line. It was like this book wanted to have everything and be about everything, but didn’t actually land its point. There was just too much chaos and too much happening to actually get a grip on what we were supposed to care about. I also had to roll my eyes a lot at the inevitable rants about modernity and social media which seemed plopped in and rather authorial.

There were moments when Amanda’s world slowed down for a moment where I could see the glimpses of a character who could actually hold this mad-show together.

I didn’t want anyone to have any knowledge about me, not without my permission. It was like someone raking their nails against my insides.

In these moments I could really empathise with her, and I wish there had been some more concrete character progression. I think that the moments where Leyva delved into her mental illness were extremely powerful. I really appreciated the gritty and ugly depictions of her anxiety, and her panic attacks were incredibly visceral. The handling of mental illness was spot on, and it was great to see Amanda actually get to do some badass things whilst acknowledging the difficulty of her reality. Aside from the demons and such.

I really like Donaldson, and Amanda’s relationship with him – call it what we will. It helped to bring humanity to the situation, and to let Amanda be a bit more vulnerable. (view spoiler) The moment D finally developed a bit of character, (view spoiler) was when I felt the book really kicked off and began to let Amanda shine more.

I thought the ending was very rushed and it kind of let it down for me. I didn’t enjoy it all that much, and was actually kind of pissed off about it. THAT was before I realised this book had a sequel. I’m much more excited about the possibility now, as that would have been an awful final ending, but works well for a cliff-hanger.

As such, I find it very difficult to describe And Then There Were Crows . But, if you’re looking for a funny and zany, rather wild and even grotesque book then this odd urban fantasy might just be for you. It has a lot of potential, and I really hope the relationships are what are developed in the sequels.

I have been provided with a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review

This book captured my attention just by the synopsis about the book. I was super excited to read it when I found out I got approved for the copy and more than willing to invest time into the book!
Unfortunately, I only made it about 10% of the way through before I decided to make it as a "dnf"

I'll start by listing the things I liked and then the things that I didn't really enjoy.

What I really enjoyed about this book was the writing style! The author has a great voice that she gave to the characters! I especially love reading characters that are really sarcastic and witty, I feel I can relate best to them. Finding characters like that can be hard sometimes, though, depending on the content of the story! I was pleasantly surprised when I opened this copy and began to read only to find sarcasm! It was very well-done!
Because of my first point, I really vibed with the main character, as I touched on. She was super intelligent and had a sort of laid back sort of attitude toward the whole plot, even though she was told the severity of the situation, which I found charming. I'm fairly certain I would've approached it the exact same way, if I'm being honest!

Now the things that made me want to put this book down are a little more difficult to explain. I feel like the book wasn't really mapped out well, it was hard to understand some of the choices that were made.
The beginning was strong! The first chapter had an introduction to the main character, but also a fight scene. I honestly didn't mind the intensity, but I wish it kept that intensity! All the sudden she has a Demon living with her, but I couldn't really figure out how that would serve the plot? A lot of focus was also directed toward that demon, a whole chapter, if I'm not wrong on that. So, just to clarify, the plot seemed to be a little confusing. I wish that it had a little faster of a progression into the main plot, instead o focusing for so long on this character who didn't seem to be important at that exact moment.
The second being that the character who is supposed to be a Seraph.
I was 10% in, but I still didn't feel like I even had a basic knowledge of who his character was. Like, at one moment he was described as appearing to be 50 years old and then in the next chapter, it felt like the author changed her mind and was setting him up to be a love interest. So, I was confused by that as well, as I feel the author should also have a read on their own characters.

All in all, I felt like it had the potential to be a good story! And, initially, I was hooked! It's just that there wasn't enough movement within the story, there was too much confusion, for me to remain as deeply focused as I would've liked to be.

When I read the blurb for And Then There Were Crows, I was really excited. A regular (mousy, even?) chick must become badass in order to recapture the six Shades from Hell and save the world. Badass chick? Right up my alley -- bring it on, please!

Unfortunately, I really struggled with the writing style of this one. The pacing was somewhat erratic, alternating between being rather slow and somewhat repetitive with being very sudden many-things-happening-all-at-once, which made it difficult for me to stay engaged with the story.

I often felt like I was listening to an excited small child relating every single detail of the happenings at a sugar-infused birthday party. I'd get to a sentence that would jolt me (Wait, you threw up? You didn't think it was more important to tell me that before telling me what colour the icing on the birthday cake was? Oh, that was also the colour of your vomit? I see.) and cause me to scramble back a few pages because either the information was very sudden or I must have zoned out and missed the lead up to this new idea.

Although this book was really not a good choice for me, I think this it will appeal to hardcore urban fantasy readers who like a lot of silly humour mixed in with gritty action.

Thank you to NetGalley and Black Spot Books for providing me with a DRC of this book.

*I received a complimentary copy of this book from Black Spot Books and Smith Publicity through NetGalley. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.*

A smartass main character.
A demon roommate.
An antisocial Angel.
Grouping themselves to try and save the world.

Indeed, "And Then There Were Crows" is a bizarre, yet interesting urban fantasy novel which takes readers to an adventure of saving the world from the apocalypse.

The story started when Amada Grey accidentally rented a room to a demon and unleashed six Shades from Hell. With the help of her upstairs neighbor, who turned out to be a seraphim, and her now demon roommate, this unimaginable trio are now responsible to catch the Shades while facing shenanigans of New York City.

The first reaction when I was reading this novel is, "What the heck am I reading?" It completely caught me off guard even when I read the synopsis. This is so far the weirdest book I've ever read. It has a lot of cursing, gruesome violence, and hilarious banters of the characters. Therefore, this book isn't for everyone. Luckily, this kind of weird is my thing.

The writing style and tone are simple and quite addicting. The plot is unpredictable. I honestly didn't know where the story was going and I can't even guess how the story would end. The curiosity built by the plot made me read the book until the very end.

For me, the best thing about this book is the characters. Amanda is a feisty and unusual protagonist. She is smart and has a sharp tongue and always want to be left alone to fight her own demons. She always pushes people who care about her away from her as her defense mechanism. However, behind that facade masked a girl who needs love and affection. Despite all that, she strongly faces whatever challenge to survive. Next are D and Barnem. Both are complex and gray. D is a demon but saves Amanda in times of perils. The motives of his actions are not clearly defined until the end of the book. On the other hand, Barnem is an angel who supposed to be helping humans. However, he doesn't really care much about humanity and just still helps Amanda to defeat the other demons.

The only issue that I have with this book is the thing about the Shades isn't explained well. It would have taken almost half of the book before I completely grasped about how the Shades worked.

Overall, "And Then There Were Crows" has interesting elements which makes it an enjoyable read.

I give this book 4/5 stars!

***I received a free copy of this book from Black Spot Books and NetGalley. Thank you for the opportunity.***

Amanda Grey needed a roommate so she placed an add on Craigslist. When a prospective renter showed up and tried to kill her she fought back and saved her own life at the cost of his. However, upon his death she unwittingly released the Shades inhibiting her attacker's body and they are pure evil.

Amanda is responsible for starting the apocalypse. She must try to stop the Shades that were freed to have any chance of saving the world. Then a new problem occurs. One of the Shades she released waltzes into her apartment with the rental contract from the guy she killed. She still needs a roommate. Even if it is a demon?

What comes next is a thrilling ride with a heroine dealing with social anxiety, everyday issues, and concerns suddenly becoming the MVP for the world. Throw in a lot of laugh -out -loud moments, "What just happened?" , no holds barred jokes and commentary, snark and sass, an interesting seraphim angel living upstairs, a romantic interest, a demon, a hoity-toity sister, and an evil cult or two and it just gives a hint of the fantastic story. There is also a good amount of cussing, violence and gore, too.

Are you still reading this review? Go get this book!

I would like to thank NetGalley and Black Spot Books for providing me with this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

Unfortunately I didn't really enjoy this read. I didn't get into the author's writing style. It felt a bit vapid and over the top, even for an urban fantasy. I was very intrigued by the synopsis, but from the get go I found the writing to be fairly immature and my emotional investment was nil.

Not recommended.

Amanda Grey has always been stressed out by life in NYC from the train to public restrooms. For her, avoidance has always been a great policy. Luckily, the apartment she shares with her parents is a great place of refuge against the stresses of city life. She goes from focusing on dealing with her own demons to dealing with actual demons since she accidentally unleashed the Six Shades of Hell on her city, and there's the fact that she's rented out a room to a very real demon, who goes by D. If she wants to make it through this she's going to have to accept the help of Barnem, the guy who lives upstairs, who just happens to be a seraphim. Though to tell the truth, she can't be sure if Barnem is motivated by roommate loyalty or the wish to enslave all of humanity.

And Then There Were Crows by Alcy Leyva is a decent debut urban fantasy novel. This novel provides a good introduction to Amanda's world. Leyva's tone and writing style is quite addicting right from the beginning. The description alone pulled me in and as I read the novel I particularly liked his brand of urban fantasy and the sarcastic sense of humor. His storytelling also keeps up a decently fast pace, so the action never lags. As for the characters, my favorite was the anti-social Barnem. I will say that Amanda isn't exactly a likable character, but she is fascinating and comes very strongly across the page. She has a sharp mind and an even sharper tongue, and it's not exactly difficult to see yourself in her as she deals with everything that's thrown her way from the mundane to the magical. This easily could have been a four star read for me, but unfortunately I felt just a little out of the loop from very early on. I was starting to wonder if this was actually a sequel. However, once I started to get into the story and the author's style of writing I began to get into the swing of things, but I still wish some of the fantasy elements were explained better from the get go. Overall, if you're looking for an intriguing new voice in urban fantasy you may want to try Alcy Leyva's And Then There Were Crows. I doubt it's for everyone, especially our leading character, but otherwise it has many great elements to make it compulsively readable.

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 evolves is 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.

I received an ARC through Netgalley, so I’d like to thank Alcy Leyva and Smith Publicity for providing me a copy.

Amanda Grey lives in New York and does her best to avoid people and the outside world as much as possible. Until her parents go on a vacation and leave her to her own devices: thus she has no choice but prepare her own food, and face the reality of rent paying. On which her parents are weeks late. What does an antisocial girl do in this situation? Puts up a Craiglists ad looking for a roommate. Turns out this isn’t the most clever thing to do. She not only manages to end up living with a demon but also sets free a bunch of Shades who wreak all kind of havoc throughout New York City. Animal heads are being hung up on wires like lampions on a summer night, strange cultish groups appear, the Mayor’s brother who works as a Pirate Captain in a children’s TV show goes crazy and decides it’s time to “Make New York Nice Again”.

Not having any other chance she, her upper neighbour – who happens to be a Seraph – and the demon set out to fix the problem. If this wasn’t enough, Amanda’s little sister, Petunia shows up out of the blue after avoiding her family for years nursing her own little secrets, a cult serving the Darkness are bent on making her their goddess and the new guy in the building, Donaldson tries his hardest to raze Amanda’s walls to the ground. Which at one point in the story happens. Literally.

Amanda is a strong protagonist. For a while I wasn’t sure if I liked her or not. She is an annoying smartass with a sharp mind and even sharper tongue who’d like nothing more than being left alone finally, to battle with her own demons in peace. Then I realized she is like me in some ways and started to understand her. Readers probably won’t like her much, but under all the snark and hard shell she is vulnerable and hungry for love. She is also an unusual MC because you don’t often find books with a character battling with mental illnesses – depression, panic attacks, etc. She has enough on her plate already and absolutely doesn’t need any more shit on top of it. Not that she has any say in the matter. So she puts herself together and faces whatever that comes to her way.

The demon – D. – and the Seraph – Barnem – are also interesting characters. Leyva plays with stereotypes here making Barnem antisocial, cynic, grumpy who doesn’t really care about humanity all that much. D., on the other hand although practically forces his money on Amanda and so tricks her into accepting him as a roommate, saves Amanda’s life on more than one occasion. My favorite character, however, is Donaldson. The guy is loyal to a fault and pretty hard to intimidate or deceive with harsh words sounding like threats but actually being part of a defense mechanism built up by Amanda as to not let anyone close to herself. Their banters are pretty funny no less than Amanda’s and Barnem’s.

The characters, the story has the potential. So why the 3 stars? While this book is enjoyable in a this-is-some-seriously-weird-shit kind of way, you can’t help but wonder how much better this could be with some more editing. There are some inconsistencies, the writing is sometimes uneven and sometimes it’s not clear what happens. It takes time to wrap one’s mind around the Shades and how they actually work – this part needs a better/clearer explanation. It’s also hard to decide if this book wants to be funny/parodic or takes itself completely seriously and falls somewhere between the too – not funny enough but also can’t take it seriously either even though Amanda’s character is meant to represent this balance. The end is a bit rushed and probably too much things are crammed into this book. It’s like the author wanted to squeeze in as many sub plots as he could but it has the opposite effect as he aimed for.

The other issue with this book is the usage of acronyms like fyi (sic!) and TBD (which I have no idea what it stands for, to be decided maybe?) in dialogues. No one uses acronyms while talking – OK some acronyms are used that way, but FYI? Weird.

All in all, Then There Were Crows is a fast paced, enjoyable read – if you have a certain kind of humor and don’t mind some violence here and there. This is a rather dark, horroresque urban fantasy with unique characterisation and promising ideas. With some improvements here and there (editing, writing – see my complaints above) this series can grow into something good and worthy of attention all fans of horror, dark fantasy, urban fantasy and everyone in between who like their story with a good measure of snark and violence.

The cover and blurb immediately drew me to this book and I couldn’t wait to dive into it. All I can say is that author Alcy Leyva must have a bizarre and twisted mind to have created And Then There Were Crows. However, I found the story to be just plain weird. Full of action, gore, demons, and angels I really thought I would devour this book. I liked it, but it took me a while to get into it. While it turned out to not be my cup of tea, I found Leyva’s writing style brilliant. The MC, Amanda Grey, was a snarky, awkward, introvert and I adored her. Leyva wove together religion, paranormal, and horror into quite a unique story.

Funny, silly, and irreverent. The characters were a bit hard to relate to, but the plot is imaginative and the author does a great job of not telegraphing where the plot is going, which keeps things interesting.

I thought I’d give an urban fantasy a try - it’s not my usual fare. This one didn’t click for me but I’m sure it’s fine for readers of the genre.