Lyla lives in a gated (hence the title!) community in the woods outside of a small town. From the outside, this community merely looks like a group of isolated suburbanites who banded together to live separate from society at large. Weird, but nothing to worry about. Within the gates, however, we find the community members being trained in combat and weaponry, being urged to, when the time comes, go for the kill, and constantly working to equip themselves and their underground shelter for the end of the world as predicted by their charismatic and prophetic leader, Pioneer. 
 But, as these things go, Lyla has always struggled with some of the commandments of her community and when she has a chance meeting with an outside boy and his inquisitive sheriff father, she starts to question everything. 
 So, when I first picked up this book, I, like many other reviewers, thought it was another dystopian Village/the Giver knock-off. I quickly realized it was cult story instead. I read a few reviews that all seemed to urge me to go into the book blind and praised the suspenseful tone. Was there any chance that Pioneer could possibly be telling the truth? Armed with these reviews, I went into this book with the mindset that it wouldn't just be another standard cult story. 
 I'm going to put the rest of this under spoiler tags. 
 (view spoiler)[BUT IT SO WAS. I never once suspected that Pioneer might possibly be actually getting visions from the Brotherhood of Aliens. I never once thought that the world was actually going to end. Sure, it did successfully show how seemingly normal adults could fall prey to a cult and give up their whole lives to follow blindly another man. But it's all standard stuff and SO predictable. 
 To be honest, I spent the whole book HOPING the world would end. I was hoping that Parker crafted this super standard cult story to draw us into a false sense of security and then BAM! Pioneer was right all along! There were aliens! Everyone died because they didn't listen to him! 
 That didn't happen of course. Pioneer was shown to be crazy, the world didn't end, Lyla got a new boyfriend out of the deal. (hide spoiler)] 
 I so wanted more out of this book. It was well-written, I'll give it that. But just so predictable.