And Then There Were Crows

New York City has always been a big fat sack of stress for Amanda Grey. From turning herself into knots as she strives 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. What's always saved her--what's always served as her bastion from the City's bright lights and cat-calling construction workers--was the little one-bedroom apartment in Queens she's shared with her parents. Of course, that's all about to change.

When her parents go on an extended vacation and leave Grey to her own devices, she quickly manages to screw everything up, finding herself broke, behind on rent, and facing eviction. That's how fast life in the city goes: One second, your biggest concern is rising Metrocard costs and avoiding eye contact with creepy looking children. The next, you're nearly murdered by a man infested with demons, one of which you've rented your bedroom to, and before you know it you've set into motion the biblical apocalypse prophesized in the Book of Revelations--literally.

In one night, Grey goes from a woman concentrated on clamping down on her own personal demons to the woman responsible for recapturing the six Shades she's unleashed upon the city. To accomplish this, she must venture out into a society even more alien to her now than before--oh, and try to stay alive, too. She manages to survive by accepting the help of Barnem, a seraphim who just happens to reside in an upstairs apartment and also just so happens to be equally terrible at human interactions as she is. Oddly, the demon Grey now shares an apartment with also steps up to help her vanquish the Shades, though she can't be sure if it's out of roommate loyalty or a secret plot to enslave humankind. Probably the latter.

Together the unlikely trio faces a bevy of social demons, from navigating political warfare, to breaking the curse of infomercials, and figuring out exactly how Grey becomes the leader of a cult, or two. For Amanda Grey, it becomes harder and harder to tell the difference between the ills of society and the influence of the Shades. She begins to notice that living with her social anxieties makes her more sensitive to the oddities around her, which, ironically, seems to make her the perfect person to deal with the world's mounting weirdness. As Grey comes to be part of a society that has accepted the strange ways we communicate with each other, she questions if the "social sanity" she felt excluded from her entire life ever really existed in the first place.

With the capture of each Shade, Grey's world begins to open--from the possible love interest that just moved into her building, to re-establishing the failed relationship with her younger sister, Amanda quietly begins to notice that maybe an earth-shattering apocalypse.is exactly what her life needed. The only thing left to figure out is how to actually cope with the end of the world.