Gateway Reviews

LEGENDARY FRYBREAD DRIVE-IN The road to Sandy June's Legendary Frybread Drive-In might not always be where you expect, but it's always where it needs to be, just around the bend on every rez or around the corner from every Native hangout. The menu serves up traditional eats and childhood snacks you haven't had in years. The Legendary grandparents are always about, ready with wisdom and hard-earned advice. Live music and movie screenings keeps the night alive. Sandy June's is a place where anything can happen, where family can reunite after long years apart. Where young people can take refuge. Where generations can come together. Where new love can blossom, and new stories can be told. THOUGHTS This frybread drive-in is a magical place. The setting really is the star in this collection. When it comes to the stories themselves, well, they were rather... b...

IF WE SURVIVE THIS Flora has always been prepared for the Worst Case Scenario. Her OCD has made sure of that. But she never expected to be faced with an actual zombie apocalypse. Planning for and living through the end of the worst are two entirely different things, but it turns out Flora is a lot more resilient than she ever thought. But with her mom dead, her dad missing, and the Los Angeles suburb where she and her brother have been sheltering being slowly overrun by the "rabids," Flora knows the only way forward is to get up and get out. And change isn't easy, especially when she doesn't know what to prepare for. The dangers of the world have changed. Nothing is as it used to be, and Flora doesn't even know what kind of dangers she and her brother might face. But with a cryptic radio signal, potentially from their father, guiding them out into the wilderness, Flora has to keep it together long enough to make it to s...

KILL CREATURES The last person Nan expects to show up to the anniversary vigil is Luce. It's Luce's  vigil, after all. She went missing, along with Edie and Jane, a year ago. She's been missing this whole time. Everybody thought they died out in the canyon. Everybody knew that to be true, even without the bodies. Especially their best friend Nan. Because Nan's the one who killed them. But with Luce suddenly back, Nan's whole reality gets tilted. She was ready to say her final goodbyes. She was ready to wipe her tears away, to hug their families a final farewell. She was ready to put this past year, and all the lies she told with it, behind her. In the face of everyone's joy at Luce's return, Nan feels something... worse. Because she knows those girls were dead, and Luce was first. THOUGHTS The atmosphere of this book is immersive, but aside...

LADY OR THE TIGER When nineteen-year-old Belle King sings, the world stops to listen. They always have. Always will. Which means when she decides to die--when she turns herself in for a murder she definitely committed--the whole world is watching. Even trapped in a jail cell in Dodge City, Kansas, Belle has herself an audience. But the last person she expects to turn up at the jail, begging for her release, is her abusive husband, a man she left behind many miles (and several bodies) ago. He was her first kill, after all. But somehow, he's still breathing, and he's wound up right here in Dodge City, begging for her to be turned back over to him. Jeopardizing all her well-laid plans. Belle King has an arsenal of tricks up her sleeve, and these days, she always gets her way. But in the 1880s, nobody wants to believe a woman. Not even a legend like her, whoever she used to be. THOUGHTS...

KILL THE LAX BRO No Hancock High student would miss the annual senior lock-in the night before graduation. Everybody who's anybody (and everybody who's nobody) will be there. But when the school's star lacrosse player, Troy Richards, turns up dead, the lock-in takes a dark turn. But not everybody knows Troy Richards is dead. Not yet. Jennifer might be every high school boy's dream girl, but she hated Troy Richards as much as any other girl at Hancock. Naomi, a geek and an underclassmen, has no reason to be caught up in all this... except that she does. Sassi might be primed for valedictorian, but she and Troy have a dirty history. And anyone would happily point fingers to perpetual senior Tatum, the not-quite-dropout rebel who can't ever seem to finish high school. These girls have nothing in common, except that they're each other's alibi when they find a body growing cold... ...

TIME AFTER TIME Nobody needs to tell nineteen-year-old Libby that pouring her college fund into buying an old Victorian house is a bad idea. She's very aware it's a bad idea. But she's been obsessed with the fixer-upper since she was a kid visiting her grandmother, so much so that the For Sale sign seems like, well, a sign. When her parents find out what she's done (and when they determine she's not willing to give up the house she bought), Libby finds herself out of one home... and into a new one. Living in the old Victorian feels strange at first, all alone, but as she settles in, Libby discovers the journals of a young woman, Elizabeth Post, who once called this house home, too. Elizabeth, who fell in love in this house circa 1925. Libby has no plans of falling in love, but she does want to fix up this old house. Which means she needs Tish. Whatever compelled broke college student Tish to knock on her door was a stro...