Gateway Reviews

THE QUEEN'S ASSASSIN Shadow has been training all her life to join Renovia's infamous Hearthstone Guild. She wants to become an assassin like the famous Caledon Holt, Queen's Assassin, but her mother and aunts expect her to serve a quiet life as a lady at court instead. Caledon Holt, deadliest member of the Guild, is bound to serve the queen by magic. He lives for the queen alone, until the task she sets has been completed. When a surprise attack brings Shadow and Caledon together, they pair up as master and apprentice to seek out traitors to the Renovian throne. Both want to escape their fate--a life at court or a life for the queen--and they find more at stake than they believed possible. Their journey has just begun. PROS Great Building Blocks This book has great fantasy elements laid down right at the beginning. There are assassins and creepy, abandoned abbeys. Letters with offici...

THE SHADOWS BETWEEN US As the second daughter to a bankrupt earl, Lady Alessandra Stathos is used to being ignored, but that doesn't mean she can't have high ambitions. She won't settle for the younger sons of rich friends that her father would like to see her wed. No, she dreams much bigger than that. She wants to be queen, and her plan is a simple one: 1) Woo the Shadow King  2) Marry Him  3) Kill Him and Take His Empire for Herself The ruler of five nations and counting, no one is entirely sure how powerful the Shadow King is. Countless ladies have been paraded before him, but he has never taken an interest in any before. Until Alessandra. Invited to stay at his court, Alessandra sets her plan in motion, but she is not the only one who would like to see the king dead. As others make attempts on his life, Alessandra must keep the king alive long enough to become his queen--and she must battle with her unexpected attraction to him, t...

RUINSONG When Cadence sings, the whole nation listens. They have to, by law of the queen. Cadence is one of the queen's most powerful mages, and her magic, like all magic, is sung. By order of the queen, Cadence uses her voice to keep the disgraced nobility in line. Songs for burning, for freezing, for laceration: Cadence is a master of torture, and her entire life is indebted to the ruthless queen. Cadence does her bidding. She must. When noblewoman Remi finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time, she lands in prison and at Cadence's merciless hands. But Remi and Cadence knew each other long ago. When Cadence is reunited with her childhood friend, who may or may not have ties to an underground rebellion, Cadence confronts a difficult choice: she can continue to be the queen's monster and save her own life, or she can risk everything to follow after her friend and stand for what is right. ...

THE RAVENS Freshman Vivi Devereaux knows that college is her chance to escape. Finally, she can leave her paranoid, tarot-card reading mother behind and start a new life. She can make a home for herself. She can make friends. And what better way to weave herself into campus life than by pledging the infamously tight-knit Kappa Rho Nu sorority? Kappa Rho Nu isn't your average sorority. The sisters of Kappa Rho Nu, called the Ravens, guard their sorority's secrets with their lives--literally. After all, witches have to keep to themselves or else. Anyone remember the witch trials? Junior Scarlett Winter is in charge of this year's pledge class, and she vows to do her best to shepherd Vivi and her fellow freshman in the ways of the Ravens. If she does a good job, Scarlett knows there will be nothing standing between her and the sorority presidency next year. But Scarlett has a secret, a secret she has kept hidden since her own freshm...