Many thanks to Netgalley and the publisher/author for providing me with an ALC in exchange for my honest review.

OMG!!! This book was exactly what I wanted it to be! I loved it. I will make sure to check out other books by this author. When I requested this I was just intrigued by the concept of it and I loved how it turned out. This story had a great plot and if you have read this and enjoyed it, This was so much. It was such a great story. I would say give this one a try. I will continue to follow this author. Way to go to this author for not letting me down.

I highly enjoyed the narrator of the audiobook. Kept me listening.

Thank you for allowing me to read this book. I enjoyed the characters and their arcs, and found the plot interesting. I look forward to reading more from this author.

This one was tough for me. I wanted to like it but the pacing and the characters prevented that. They weren't developed very well. It had promise, for sure.

I seem to have enjoyed this more than most people did. I actually read through it super fast, found it really difficult to put down because I wanted to know what was going to happen next. The ending was a bit hokey, but overall, I very much enjoyed this. It didn't feel like a young adult horror novel at all, at least for most of it.

"When the cops arrive, only a few things are clear:
- Four girls entered a dangerous cave.
- Three of them came out alive.
- Two of them were rushed to the hospital.
- And one is soaked in blood and ready to talk."

With a tagine like that, I was so intrigued going into the story and this story did not disappoint. The plot of the story was so interesting and I loved how the story teased about the lake on whether or not there was something supernatural about it and that even at the end its up to the reader to make their own decisions on it.

The characters in the story were very different from each other and I wished I got to know more about them as the story was very intriguing to the point that the characters themselves were intriguing even at the end. I really like how the world building was incorporated into the plot as I found myself wanting to know more. In the end, I really enjoyed this story and recommend it.

Into the Sublime was surprisingly spooky for a YA book! I was pleasantly surprised by how much I ended up enjoying this one and I definitely want to read more from Kate A. Boorman in the future. Her writing created such a creepy atmosphere that had me hooked from start to finish!

A plot that would appeal to fans of The Descent and Fight Club, the story is that several girls make their way into a cave and one doesn't make their way out. The story shifts back and forth to reveal what happened when the girls were underground and while it sounds like something that would be right up my alley, it just fell a bit flat. I wanted to see more reveals about what happened underground, more world building/mythology building, instead so much is put into the psychology box and the two characters who are not Amelie are barely utilized. I would have liked to see more character building to help build the mystery and plot devices. While I enjoyed the premise, the development and execution wasn't there for me. Really cool cover though!

Really couldn't get into the writing style of this book. Love the premise of it, but the writing is a bit too dense for me.

This was definitely creepy and I really loved the premise of it, but overall was just an okay read for me. I really enjoyed the psychological elements of the story but at times felt a little to YA for my taste, even as someone who typically enjoys this genre when it's done well.

If you're looking for an easy read that has some creepiness sprinkled in, give this one a try. Big thank you to NetGalley and Macmillan for my review copy!

Reminiscent of the horror films "The Descent" and "As Above So Below", "Into the Sublime" by Kate A. Boorman is a claustrophobic, pulse-pounding horror-adventure novel that keeps you at the edge of your seat. Boorman does an excellent job of combining an unreliable narrator with the uncertainty of the characters' location in the caves, creating an unsettling sense of confusion that lends itself very well to the genre.

Great book and enjoyed the characters . loved the slight romance and the how well the group worked together. Overall a great book . I would read this author again.

This is a horror story that is more eerie and unsettling than properly scary. It certainly encourages us to question our own minds and thought processes, the nature of reality. But its a bit confusing and the ending is utterly toothless.

'Into the Sublime,' by Kate A. Boorman is young adult horror novel. Overall fans of the genre will enjoy this twist between 'The Descent' and 'The Blair Witch Project.' It hits just the right notes of creepy and story telling.

When I finished Into the Sublime, my initial reaction was simply “huh.” Not huh? but huh. It’s a book that makes you, like the police in the story, question everything that you read. What exactly happened in that underground cave and how much of what you’ve been told is actually real? What should you take away from the story? Into the Sublime is a book that makes you think.

We are told the story mostly through the lens of a self-admitted unreliable narrator. The police have just discovered three girls who are injured, disoriented, and distressed. According to them, they ventured into a mysterious cave where they quickly found themselves trapped and terrified. The main issue though? Four girls entered the cave and only three came out. Only one girl is ready to tell the police what happened, but in order to do it right, she has to start from the very beginning.

The timeline of the book switches back and forth between third-person scenes with the police and first-person narration of one of the girls, Amelie, explaining what happened. I thought this format worked well to provide the plot with additional suspense and pacing. As readers, we are consistently forced out of the story in ways that are sometimes jarring. I could imagine that that might be annoying for some people, but for me, it functioned as a way to keep me hooked on what would happen next.

As far as the writing goes, the book is very atmosphere-oriented, which is pretty typical in horrors and psychological thrillers. As someone who is afraid of the dark, I found the underground scenes particularly terrifying. Throughout most of the book, the characters only have very small beams of light to guide their way, and sometimes they’re pitched in absolute darkness. Nope, couldn’t be me. That being said, I did noticed that a complaint many readers had was that the characters lacked depth. Though I agree with this assessment, I ultimately think it’s what makes the most sense. They met each other just moments before entering the cave together so, as the first-person narrator, Amelie can’t actually know that much about any of them other than what she learns in the small period of time that they’re together. If the author wanted to provide more character development and background, I think a multiple POV form of storytelling would have been necessary. Honestly, multiple POVs with this book sounds like a lot of fun. I wonder how that would have turned out?

All in all, I think Into the Sublime is a book that gets in your head more than under your skin, so I would firmly place it as a psychological thriller with horror aspects. It’s got a gorgeous, yet chilling, cover photo and I think it’s worth a try if the premise sounds interesting to you!

This was kind of a miss of me. This book sounded really good and I thought it was going to give R.L. Stine vibes. But it did not. I thought the writing was a little flat. I never felt scared reading this which is what I like in horror books. I didn't really care about the characters. I wished this book was more spooky.

Four teenage girls chase after an urban legend about a subterranean lake called The Sublime where people can confront their darkest fears. However, only three girls come out of the cave alive and the police are left trying to piece together what happened.

Into the Sublime by Kate A. Boorman presents readers with a surreal and twisty, turvy psychological YA horror.

However, what I feel like was missing to this story was heart. I was missing the camaraderie between the girls that would make me feel invested in them and care whether they live or die. One of girls--who simply goes by H--doesn't have a personality outside of making horror movie references, and ironically, the movies she mentions (i.e. The Descent and As Above, So Below) work so well and are compelling precisely because they are about a tight-knit group of people.

I also had issues with the pacing and the frame narrative. For reference, this story is told from the perspective of one of the survivors following the events of the cave. However, the breaks where the police are questioning her story felt more disruptive to the story’s momentum and did nothing to solve the actual mystery or move the plot forward. I wish those parts had been cut out or that something more had been done with them.

All and all, I feel like Into the Sublime is a flawed, watered-down version of all the horror movies it borrows from.

This was a very intriguing story from the start. Four girls, with no prior ties other than a now disbanded thrill-seekers group, sneaking off to visit a mysterious cave with supposed mysterious powers to provide a great “change”. Immediately there are so many questions because we don’t know who is dead, who is injured or why one of the girls is covered in blood. We don’t even know the real reason they are all willing to go on such a trip. I really loved that everything was a mystery we had to unravel through the police “interrogation” afterwards. It was like Boorman thought, “okay let me give the readers the ending first with absolutely no context” and she was so right for that!

The characters had such different motivations that created a fun dynamic of tensions and secrets from the start. I think Boorman had a really interesting way of revealing details about each of the characters personalities. Since they were all strangers to each other we got to know them alongside the narration which was really unique but sometimes failed to deliver the full developed characters I desired. I mean I think it was intended for them to be unknown in and uneasy way but I was hoping to learn more if that makes sense! For example, one character is known to always be carrying candy and offering it and that was one of their main traits for most of the book, but that didn’t really reveal anything substantial in my opinion. Each character was definitely flawed, such as the egotistical leader, or the one hiding things, and I feel like one could even call our narrator quite unreliable which is always a bonus in my book. I really was so determined to figure out what went wrong in the cave and what really happened but the ending could have had more power for me. The main problem I had is a slight spoiler but I will just say I do not like horror that leans into poor representation of mental illness.

I personally read a lot of ya mystery and horrors so I feel like it takes a lot to really surprise me. I know a lot of readers will still enjoy the reveals and I wouldn’t exactly call them predictable either! I think the narration style was very unique but was confusing to the overall flow as a reader, and the atmospheric setting was something I had never encountered, especially if claustrophobia gets to you. I almost wish there was more time spent for the reader to see the characters interact and less repetitive set up. While it’s not my favorite YA Horror of all time (that’s a hard standard to meet) it was definitely worth the read for the atmospheric plot! I would recommend this if you enjoy YA Horror but I don’t think it would be a good starting off point in the genre.

Really enjoyed this book and look forward to reading more thrillers by Boorman. Great read for Halloween!

I absolutely loved this book. So much that I actually bought a physical copy too. This was terrifying in like a jump scare way and also so delicate in the way the characters processed grief. Very impressed.

This review will be purposely short and sweet--and lacking too many details. Because this is a book that you have to go into not knowing much about. 

From the first page, this book takes you on a psychological journey--not ever really knowing what's going on. Told from alternating viewpoints--we get Amelie Desmarais' perspective, as she and a group of girls make their way to the Sublime--and underground lake with sinister folklore surrounding it. The other side of the story is officers Vargas and Draker. And I won't get into what they see. 

The problem with a book like this and hearing from a main character's perspective--in this case, Amelie's--we don't know whether we can trust her version of events or whether we can trust her. I spent much of the book not knowing who was what and what the heck was going on... And I LOVED that. 

This book is part-horror, part-psychological thriller, part-cave horror. The latter, leaving the reader at times feeling claustrophobic and off-kilter. 

There is much more than meets the eye to this one, and though I can see being targeted at a younger, teen audience, it was highly entertaining and intelligently fleshed out in its plot. 

Thank you for the opportunity to read and review this book.