Gateway Reviews

Four girls go into a cave. Three come out, covered in blood. Two are hysterical. One is ready to talk. Amelie Desmarais has a story to tell, and she won't cut corners, no matter what the cops want. Part of a now-defunct thrill-seeker group, Amelie and three others planned an adventure to find a secret underground lake known as "The Sublime." Legend says this lake has the power to change things for those who seek it--assuming they make it there alive. Amelie certainly had something she wanted to change. The others, she assumed, did too.  But as Amelie's story unwinds, nothing is as straightforward as it seems. These girls weren't friends but strangers. Amelie is hardly the thrill-seeking type. And she's definitely covered in somebody 's blood. Where is the fourth girl, who didn't return? And who's blood is it? Is Amelie spinning a tale to hide her own guilt? Or is there really something lurking down in the Sublime?

Benji's on the run. He's not the first trans kid in history to run away from a hyper-religious home, but he might be the first with a murderous cult on his tail. Benji isn't just any teenager, after all. He's their secret weapon: Seraph, the avenging angel who will end humanity once and for all. Not that there's much of humanity left. The Angels already decimated the population with the bioweapon they released two years ago, leaving the lucky dead and the unlucky writhing masses of flesh in the ruins of the world. They need Benji to finish the job. But just as they corner Benji, Benji is rescued by a group of vigilantes, local teens from the Acheson LGBTQ+ Center. These kids take him in, adopt him, make him one of their own at the insistence of Nick, their leader. Only Nick knows the truth about Benji--knows that Benji is a bioweapon worse than they've ever known. And Nick might have a hidden agenda of his own. 

Cat has no eyes. This is a new development, though not the first--not the worst. Everything has been changing recently, though Cat can't remember when this started. More importantly, she can't remember why this started--why she and her classmates started changing. Why High School itself is alive and breathing. Why they can't leave. Cat can't remember anything, until she can. Bit and pieces come back to her, parts of the story--pieces of the puzzle that she hopes will let her escape, let them all escape. But not everyone wants to leave High School. Not everyone wants Cat  to leave. Something is stalking them, and Cat has to put the pieces together, before it is too late. Before whatever is stalking her catches up to her.  Cat doesn't know if she can survive that.

Everybody wants to kiss Remy Holloway. Of course they do. She's a Holloway Girl, after all, and she's just entering her Kissing Season, too. Everybody Remy kisses during her season will have good luck, but she's not planning on kissing just anybody. She's got her eyes set on one boy alone.  But all magic has rules, and when Remy breaks hers, she doesn't bestow good luck on her chosen boy. She gives him bad luck, instead--so bad, in fact, that she swears off kissing for the rest of her season. She doesn't want to be anybody else's curse. She needs to break the first curse she caused, after all--even if the new boy next door is making it hard for her to keep her newfound, kiss-free lifestyle intact.