Gateway Reviews

BLUE BEACH Fifteen-year-old Blue Collins can't wait for this summer to begin. As the daughter of the owner of Santa Monica's only Black beach, she's practically a summer queen. She'll be spending hours in the waves, sunbathing on the shore, and helping her mother run the stand where they sell refreshments. And with the summer kick-off parade just finished, she can feel summer in the air. Everything's great. Until Blue and her beau Ben find the body of Dottie Whitehouse, a white debutante, washed up on their beach. The local, white property owners don't like having a Black beach in the neighborhood. The future of Blue Beach is always a little... uncertain. Something like a body washing ashore? It could kill her mother's business. Which means one thing: Blue and Ben move the body into the waves. But when it washes ashore on the nearby white beach, evidence points to tampering... and all eyes land on Ben. ...

SHAPES OF LOVE The world's obsessed with Sassy, the Internet-star-turned-pop sensation known for her lyrical love songs. Everyone wants to know about the guy who inspired her songs. Was he her first love? What happened to him? Are they still together, or were they never meant to be? Every new song she releases adds to the buzz, which only makes her label happier. There's just one problem. Sassy might have the world obsessed with her love ballads, but Sasha, the 19-year-old girl behind this pop sensation, has never been in love. She's aroace-spec (aromantic, asexual), and her love songs have been inspired by her favorite books, TV shows, and fandom ships. And she's afraid that if the world finds out there is no boy behind the ballads, they'll feel betrayed by the pop star they've come to know and love. Enter Kai, Sasha's estranged ex-best friend and former boyfriend (whose heart she broke when she came out to him ...

CALYPSO'S ODYSSEY Callie Quinn has spent her whole life on Catalina Island, and some days it feels like she'll never escape. Now that she's graduated high school, and without any college prospects on the horizon, her days are spent helping her father with the rundown beachside inn that is her inheritance. This is her life, now and forever: customer service, smiling through the bad Yelp reviews, and watching friends drift away to bigger and better things. Until one stormy evening, while working the late shift at the inn, something changes. Until she meets him . It isn't exactly a meet-cute. The storm overturned Odie's sailboat. She's the one who drags him from the waves and gives him a place to shelter for the night... or the week... or the month. He's secretive, reserved, and desperate to disappear from a life he won't tell her anything about. But she understands wanting more than your lot in life, and she...

SECONDS TO SPARE Evelyn Werth is trapped in a nightmare. Literally (except for the fact, you know, that she's pretty sure she's awake ). For some reason, she's the only person aboard this Aloha Airways flight who knows they're about to crash. Probably because she's seen it all before. Stuck in a 28-minute time-loop that last just long enough for her to brace herself for the inevitable nosedive the plane takes right before the loop resets, Evelyn doesn't know what to do. At this point, she's tried it all. She's stopped the baby behind her from crying. She's stolen candy from every available purse and backpack. She's gotten to know the names of everyone on board in her own personal manifest. And nothing stops the nosedive or the loop repeating. Until she wakes Orion James, the cute boy from a few rows up who has slept every loop thus far. Waking Orion changes things, because he seems to be experiencing t...

THE NIGHT KING'S COURT When the position of Luminaire opens at the Night King's court, Ida knows this is her chance. The court is a place of magic, of all-night revelry, which is appealing to a small town girl like her. Even more appealing? The fact that her father disappeared seven years ago from the very same court, never to be seen or heard from again. Her mother gave up on her father years ago, but Ida knows he wouldn't have abandoned them like that. Something else is behind his disappearance. But one doesn't just waltz into the Night King's court. One needs an invitation, and Ida knows her own dazzling brand of candle magic will be just right to win herself an appointment to the court as Luminaire. She's been preparing for an opportunity such as this. She won't let it pass her by. But entering the Night King's court is just the start. Finding out what happened to her father is a much harder task. With all the ...

THE COVE Lindsay Weinberg might not know what she wants in this life, but she does know one thing: boarding school isn't it. In fact, she's been kicked out of yet another prep school just now (which, well, took them long enough ). Usually this means a few sweet months of freedom in NYC before the new semester starts at whatever boarding school her parents convince to admit her next, but this time, when the driver comes to pick her up, he doesn't head back to the city like she planned. He's taking her up the coast instead. Marbury, Maine is a small town. Like, really small. Cold, isolated, just a blip on deserted coastline. And just outside of Marbury is her estranged Uncle Levi's remote farmhouse, the place Lindsay's been invited to this summer to "straighten her out." But Uncle Levi isn't around when she arrives. His zealously evangelical new wife is there instead, running a reform camp for troubled teens. Ma...