A review by fishreads
Gateway Catastrophe by Louisa Masters

adventurous hopeful medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

Tom, just like his best friend Skye, has lived in their small town all his life. He works in his family's Italian restaurant and as a ride-share driver and still struggles with his family's homophobia after coming out to them in his twenties. Apart from discovering a year ago that his dead grandmother decided to stick around as a ghost and he can talk to her when he drives out to Mannix Estate, Tom's life hasn't been particularly exciting. That all changes when his latest ride-share client turns out to be a demon who calls himself Marc, and Tom gets a crash course introduction to the existence of demons and the otherworld. He decides to stay and help his Mannix Estate friends in any way he can. 

One of those people is Gabe, who Tom felt attracted to when they first met, but things turned sour when his dead grandmother insulted Gabe. With the impending end of the world as they know it, while everybody is scrambling trying to find a way to defeat the demons, Tom and Gabe decide not to waste any more time.

Similar to the rest of the series, Tom and Gabe's story had the same hurry-up-and-wait quality. There was a lot of scrambling around trying to come up with a plan on how to defeat the demons, who had the upper hand in numbers and power. The demon, Marc, unsurprisingly made for an amusing secondary character (whose story continues in 'Higher Demon,' the first installment of the new connected series). Tom and Gabe's romance was serviceable but not particularly exciting.  I expected to like Gabe a lot more as a character; he seemed levelheaded, competent, and smart, but instead, he didn't particularly blow my mind. 

This was a relatively satisfying conclusion to the series, which left an overall flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants impression. It made for interesting and amusing ride, I enjoyed the overall idea but the execution of the supernatural plot and chosen romance tropes did leave a few things to be desired.

Themes: dual POV, ghosts, demons, small town