I took a gamble with this book and unfortunately lost. Should have listened to my friends. 
 It was like repeatedly hitting myself on the head with a frying pan. Pointless and painful. Gabriel's Inferno was one big mess. 
 Let's start with the writing. It was awful! I have to crawl through all grammar mistakes and strange sentences building. (You should know it is really bad when the girl who learned English by watching Buffy notices them). It was uneven, chaotic, jumping from one thing to another. The story is told by third person POV but it kept jumping from thoughts of one character to the other so abruptly that it left me confused. 
 I have a horrible confession to make. I hate The Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri. Don't hit me! I know that it is seen as one of the greatest works of world literature, but I just can't get through it. I tried to read it for times in different times of my life and I've never got father that third circle of Hell. So seeming as Gabriel's Inferno has The Divine Comedy as the key element of the plot, you understand why I am not a fan. 
 Then there was this one little problem with me hating every character. Especially Julia. She was just pathetic excuse of a human. She cried all the time! ALL THE TIME! It's a wonder she didn't die from dehydration. And the author made her look like a saint. Nobody is that perfect! She was so good that I've wondered if little birds do her hair and other cute animals make dresses for her and kept expecting cherubs to start singing in her honor. 
 You can see book annotation describes Professor Gabriel Emerson as 
 "Enigmatic and sexy. He uses his notorious good looks and sophisticated charm to gratify his every whim, but is secretly tortured by his dark past and consumed by the profound belief that he is beyond all hope of redemption." 
 Let me translate it to you. It means that he is an asshole at day and wimp at night. 
 And the DRAMA! Or god, so much drama... I rolled my eyes so far back into my head, I almost seized. 
 I would have stop reading it after first 40 pages, but I promised myself that I will try to finish my books however awful they are. So I tortured myself, wasted my time and got behind my reading challenge, but I was still determined to see the end of this book and be forever done with it. I was 70% in when I learned that there will be sequel! So no, I won't torture myself anymore just to be probably left with cliffhanger. Nope... I am done!