I always fall for books with this plot. This was very Decent/47 Meters Down (the 2nd not the 1st). This story follows four girls who enter a cave without telling anyone around them after finding instructions regarding the lake on the dark web (sounds like a great, safe idea). Once they are inside, their own horrors start to bleed out and they slowly start to turn on each other. No story like this would be complete without untold secrets that conveniently come out during the worst experience of their lives. However, they find themselves in serious trouble when only three exit the cave.

I would have really liked a little bit more character building from the girls. But, I would still absolutely recommend this book to people who enjoy creepy YA books. Specially thanks to Net Galley for the opportunity to read this in return for an honest review.

Four girls enter into a cave... only three come out. Two of them are injured and rushed to the hospital and the remaining one is soaked in blood and ready to talk. The story follows Amelie Desmarais, a girl who’s been sick all her life but has somehow found a hobby in a now-defunct thrill-seeking group, she use to go with her cousin and best friend until a terrible accident that has injured her cousin Sasha. Now Amelie is ready to go on the trip that Sasha so badly wanted to go on, a trip into a dangerous cave to find a lake that the Colorado locals call “The Sublime” that is filled with lore... and believed will change you after you face your greatest fear. Along for the journey is Devon, Gia, and H. All four girls have their own reason for going on this trip but the moment they go into the cave things begin to get complicated. The story is told between present day ( with Amelie being interviewed by the cops) and past with her recounting the journey. The cave is dangerous... but there might be something in there with them, hunting them down, and the only way out is through, but as they begin to lose each other, and secrets spill out, who knows what will happen next as they are forced to face the darkness. Amelie has her own dark secrets and the story reveals her part in her cousin’s accident as well as what truly lead to the four girls going to the cave. The story had a nice “The Descent” movie kind of vibe to it but lacked the actual scare and good execution that the movie had. The story does have a lot of atmospheric parts, but the characters were hard to get attached to and the plot just wasn’t as interesting as I would have hoped. The overall ending was okay, I guess I was just expecting something a little more from a book with such an interesting premise and beautiful horror cover. Overall, it’s a good read if you like a little bit of horror so definitely give it a try, even if it was lacking for me it might be for you ( I’m a hardcore horror lover so I might have judged it a little harder than I normally would have).

*Thanks Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group, Henry Holt and Co. (BYR) for sending me an arc in exchange for an honest review*

Absolutely thrilling, I honestly wasn’t able to go to sleep on a few nights of reading this. Definitely one for the year! I loved the atmospheric writing and the tone!

Four girls enter the cave, but three of them return. Two of the three are rushed to the hospital. The last wants to talk and she is covered in blood but is what she is saying is true or is she hiding something.
This horror young adult book had a great premise and had times where it had me interested with its creepy moments. My biggest issue is that I just could not connect to the characters. I just did not feel like we had a lot of detail about the characters. This could have been remedied with the main characters being friends or at least have a longer period of acquaintanceship. Overall, this book is great for fans of young adult books who like creepy twists. Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group for a chance to read this book.

A really fun, creepy, thrilling underground adventure...or nightmare? That's actually my personal nightmare in real life, and in this story it is the nightmare and horror story belonging to Amelie, Devon, H, and Gia - four thrill seekers trying to locate an underground lake said to change things, called The Sublime.
The four head underground without telling anyone based on some instructions obtained through a dark web horror fan site. They are trying to see if the lore tied to the lake is real - or at least that's what they tell each other. But when they each start to experience their own personal versions of their biggest fears come alive, they start to slowly turn on each other. Secrets are revealed along with revelations on why each has made this dangerous trip. And when only three girls come out of the cave, they have some serious explaining to do.
This is told through Amelie who is intentionally vague as she wants to tell the truth but she doesn't want to own up to the bad stuff she's done that's resulted in serious consequences for others. I really enjoyed this - the author does and excellent job of toying with the reader's adrenaline levels. Brining you to the peak of the story only to back up a few steps and fill in some other details. It works in favor of the story as it reads like a full length ghost story. I would definitely watch the movie adaptation of this, I'm just saying.

This story was a really fast paced YA horror story that I think most will thoroughly enjoy. I think that the last bit was a bit predictable, but the lead up to the end was such a good ride that I'm not really that upset. I think that the unreliable narrator in this story really did a good job of setting the tone/narrative voice and made me question what was really happening. Solid, entertaining YA horror: I'm always down for a good horror story, so I hope you too will give this one a try!

I can't stop thinking about this book. I am tempted to read it again.
There were so many nuances to this story and the suspense was kept at peak level throughout the book.
Even when you knew things, you wanted to keep reading to find out how everything happened.
Great book.
Very suspenseful.

Full review will appear in Fangoria Magazine; please contact reviewer directly for a copy of the write-up.

Claustrophobic narrative that would appeal to fans of the movie The Descent. Unreliable narrator, Amelie, that made me question what was real and what wasn’t. The middle could have used some breathing room but overall, an entertaining read!

A fast paced YA horror for fans of the genre who needed their next claustrophobic cave book.

I'm a little torn on this one honestly. I really enjoyed it up until the very end where instead of leaning in, things got a little formulaic or predictable. However, the book was an easy read, had some seriously creepy moments, and made me consume it in a single sitting.

When the dead body surfaced, the small Colorado town thought it would spell the end of a mysterious disappearance that had lingered for three months. Back then, four teenaged women went into some caves in search of a miracle, disappeared for five days, and only three of them emerged. Only one of the survivors was in any kind of shape to relay events at the time; the others needed immediate medical assistance.

Amelie had quite the tale to tell, about four acquaintances who got together through a kind of informal dare club called Dissent. That club offered challenges that would force people to face their fears. Tragedy struck at one of these, convincing Amelie to seek out an underground lake tucked away inside a cave complex with supposedly mystical properties. Her companions are horror movie buff H, the take charge/bossy Gia, and the emotionally cold Devon. They've each come for reasons of their own. There's a legend, which says a one-eyed witch found immortality down in the caves, and that the lake known as Sublime can trigger a needed life change . . . providing searchers survive their journey into the dark.

These four women face some very personal horrors as well as more mundane threats on their journey. Is one of them perhaps orchestrating events? Is the legend hogwash or does it hold some elements of truth? And what is the real reason Amelie seeks this change? These and other questions about friendship, loyalty, truth and deception bubble to the surface of Kate A. Boorman's gripping YA novel of dark suspense and psychological horror, Into the Sublime.

There are two schools of thought about evil in works of horror. One side fancies evil is an external force, something that wants to invade. The other school posits that evil is something that lurks within us all, and that no matter what we do or try to do, it will be there just under the surface, waiting the right push, the right series of events to slide into a dominant role and wreak havoc. Solid, engaging works of suspense and horror fiction have arisen from exclusive use of either model, but the best of them use a little of both to flavor the dishes.

Into the Sublime gives us a narrator who is not as nice as she might seem, gives her a purpose to go someplace where an evil force might well be waiting for prey. Along with her are three unknown elements who might each be hiding sinister purposes. This is a setup that is rife with opportunities to explore both external as well as internalized darkness, and when Into the Sublime is rocking on all cylinders (which is pretty much the entirety of the first three quarters and much of the last quarter), the book takes full advantage of these opportunities.

These characters glimpse movement at the edges of vision, and our narrator witnesses strange, bloody visions and audible events that none of the others cop to seeing. They in turn each discover something that shakes them to the core. A dog that cannot be here for one. A terrible fiend for another … Are these things for real, or is this all just overactive imaginations at work?

I hold serious appreciation for novels that take serious pains to keep both rational and irrational explanations for the phenomena the characters experience throughout the first half. I would not dare spoil the outcome of this quandary or of the girls fates, but Boorman does a fine job keeping us turning the pages in search of answers and keeps both possibilities open for quite a while. Bravo.

The novel is divided into sections titled with single word references to the theme for that particular sequence. These sequences are all told first person, as a part of Amelie's lengthy statement. These are separated by third person accounts on the day of the girl's emergence, when local authorities are trying to figure out just what in the hell happened. It is here, through third person perspective restricted to a member of law enforcement, that we get some telling clues about Amelie's unreliable character. But again, the girl could just be shaken up. She might not be consciously deceiving the authorities (and through them the reader). Then again, she could well be a calculating killer.

Boorman presents her novel in clever ways to provoke us to figure out what is too outlandish to be true, what is patently false, and what (though possibly improbable) is the truth. In the end, we get a reveal on Amelie's perspective, but we are left with enough ambiguity to make us pause before deciding to buy in or not.

The cleverness is not restricted to the unfolding story itself. This is a novel with quite a few twists, revelations, and quirks to share. However, it is also a novel that knows its history.

Into the Sublime features a character who is in love with horror movies. Therefore it has the ability to offer references or shout outs to those filmic influences that have been injected straight into the storytelling marrow. This is refreshing, particularly since it is not done in an ironic fashion but merely as a statement of fact. Just about the time I thought, "Hey, this reminds me of Neil Marshall's flick, The Descent," one of the characters specifically mentions parallels with both that film and the film As Above, So Below (the former is a gripping tale of several women who go caving and find horrors, the latter is about a group of people who visit the catacombs beneath Paris and find horrors). Author Boorman certainly did her homework in making the horror afficionado sound authentically interested in the genre's many forms—there's even a somewhat deep cut reference to a Korean horror flick, The Wailing, which is charming.

Perhaps the deepest cut of all is the protagonist's name: Amelie was of course a 2001 French film which is utterly charming in its fantasy portrayal of Paris and its peoples, but the film was made by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, who also made some seriously dark flicks such as Alien: Resurrection and The City of Lost Children. The former concerned with gestating new life from an old horror, while the latter incorporates the idea of stolen dreams. Such elements do not necessarily play directly into this narrative, but there's attention paid to carrying an old evil from the depths as well as shared prophetic dreams. Then again, this could just be my own version of H's obsessive cataloging, seeing references where no such reference actually exists . . .

The narrative also features a strain of Nietzschean philosophy throughout the work, including a couple of aphorisms such as "'There are no beautiful surfaces without a terrible depth,'" which gets thrown into the text a few times. (202) As well, Amelie recites another bit: "'The devotion of the greatest is to encounter risk and danger, and play dice for death.'" These always come from her, and they could be a measure of the chic teen rebellion thing, telling us a little bit about a character who embraces nihilist theories without necessarily thinking through all the ramifications, or the recitations could provide clues to the deeper resonance and meaning in the work's narrative.

Into the Sublime is an engaging read. It's a clever novel, a puzzle of a story which requires its reader to read between the lines, evaluate the information we receive from an unreliable narrator, and interpret the events that actually occurred. However, this is not some aloof work of philosophy. Instead, it's as emotionally compelling as it is tricky. There's a delicious sense of claustrophobia, of being trapped inside walls that are steadily closing in, which is both true of the physical situation our characters are stuck in as well as the narrator's mindset. While billed as a horror novel (and quite unafraid to put its characters through the wringer) there is nothing gratuitous about the piece. The horror elements are handled with restraint, milking scenes for their suspense instead of a gross out factor. In short, Kate A Boorman has provided audience with what they look forward to most: A solid read that keeps us up past our bedtimes, reading and shivering into the night.

I received an advanced copy of Into the Sublime by Kate A. Boorman from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. Four girls enter a cave system in search of “the sublime,” only three come out alive. I would recommend for those who enjoyed the film The Descent.

I found the premise intriguing as I love horror as well as the movie The Descent. I thought throughout there were some unnecessary dialogues as well as confusing descriptions. The pacing was slower which caused me to not feel engaged with the story.

I would have enjoyed if the four girls were friends, but they were basically strangers who met on an app for adventure.

Big thanks to netgalley for the eARC in exchange for my honest review.

First of all let me just say that I hate giving stars to any books. Not because they don't deserve them, but because they all do. Writing a book is <i>hard</i>, and I know that from personal experience. You spend so much time creating this thing, this baby of yours, that it has some parts of you in it, your soul. One day you just push it out and it's out there for the world to judge and you have to deal with people rating it and judging its' merit but in the end it doesn't matter because you made it.

Now, all of that is to say, <u>this is not a bad book. </u> Were there parts I didn't care for? Sure, nothing is perfect. I had a hard time relating to the characters at some points, and I had a hard time imagining the setting because I've never been in an underground cave lake, but I could easily understand the fear. The anxiety of not knowing what lurks in the dark. Hearing a sound that sends you into a panic because it sounds like a bad memory, but instead is a bad soon-to-be memory. The fear and the anxiety add to the idea of the unreliable narrator. <spoiler>She's the uninjured survivor, or is she the perpetrator? Were the monsters in their fear filled minds, or were they real? Did the Sublime change things for them, or did the experience?</spoiler>

I would have liked a harder lean into the unreliable narrator idea. Leave me questioning absolutely everything I think I know about this book. Make it keep me up at night. Overall, worth the read.

Some mixed feelings on this one. I found the premise really intriguing and was excited to see where the story would take it (Also can we talk about that amazing cover?!). However, I didn't ever feel super captivated by this one. Every time I would feel myself being gripped by the plot, it was interrupted by some unnecessary dialogue or confusing descriptions. The latter refers to the continual description of the cave and the paths explored. I feel like being able to visualize the setting is important to a horror story set in a cave, but I found it was difficult to envision what the author was describing.

Another issue was feeling disconnected from the characters. We're following these four girls as they venture into the cave, but the girls aren't friends. In fact, they're basically strangers. I think this fact made it hard to humanize and care about each character. I think the characters either should have already been friends, or at least acquaintances, or we should have gotten the POV of all four rather than just one.

As I said, my feelings are mixed, because I did like aspects of the story! There were definitely moments where I felt unnerved or creeped out by the imagery being presented. I especially enjoyed how the different characters were having different experiences based on their personal fears/phobias. I can't really say more without spoilers, but there were some creative moments in this.

While this didn't fully work for me, I still think it is a book worth reading if it sounds like something you might enjoy! I can definitely see others enjoying this more, especially around spooky season.

This was such a fun read--a fast-paced YA riff on 'The Descent' that has some great characters, a solid setting, and pretty great plotting. It wasn't quite perfect, but it kept me enthralled to such an extent that I read it in one sitting (and on a work night where I was *trying* to go to bed early....). I pretty much couldn't put it down. A great YA horror novel, It's like caffeine in book form.

Thank you Netgalley and Macmillan Children's Publishing Group.for allowing me to read and review this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I would recommend this book to those who enjoy YA thrillers and the film: The Descent. I did however have a hard time getting through the book due to pacing issues, not being fully captivated by the story and the thriller aspect.

Into the Sublime is an average read for me, I would still recommend trying it out but to not have high expectations diving in.

3 stars

I didn't really like any of the characters in this book, but I did think Boorman did a good job writing suspense and horror. I would definitely recommend this to teens looking to graduate from RL Stine.

<i> Thank you to Netgally for this e-ARC in exchange for my honest opinon. </i>

The truth is that I have really mixed feelings about this one!
I was intrigued by the very spooky cover and the book description. I think the premise of this book sounds super cool: Four teen girls on a spooky adventure in a cave, seeking out a legendary haunted lake? UM!!

I don't know what it was, but I just never found myself fully engaged with the book. I almost DNF'd it a bunch of times--not because the writing was bad, but just because I was not fully captivated. I will say that every time I almost quit, something happened that drew me back in--I just wish the entire story was like that. I didn't really feel connected to any of the characters, and I felt like there was soooo much unnecessary dialogue. I also found some of the descriptions of the more "adventourous" parts of the story kind of confusing to follow--I am not an adventure book kind of person, so maybe that's on me, but I just had no clue how to visualize the descriptions of what was going on half the time.

There was some stuff I did really like, tough! I thought that some parts of the story were genuinely creepy, especially around the things that the girls were most scared of/the scary stuff that was "chasing" them in the cave. I got super jumpy reading certain parts of it while I was home alone, which is definitely a compliment for any horror book! I also REALLY loved that this is one of the few YA horror books I've ever read that don't involve any BOYS. So few horror stories genuinely pass the Bechdel test so and this one for sure does, which I appreciated so so much.

I think overall this book was not necessarily my cup of tea. It's not a bad book, I think others will probably really like it, but for me some elements of it just did not work for my tastes.

Four girls enter a cave, only 3 come out alive.
One is covered in blood. The other two are rushed to emergency. This book takes you through dark places to find out what happened to the 4th

What a unique read! I have never read anything like this story and I definitely hoped for a bit more creepiness behind the story it certainly kept me on my toes. The adventure/horror of getting to the sublime in the underground caverns while the characters questioned each other as well as their sanity just had this really cool concept to it. The ending was a bit strange but I definitely enjoyed it. I absolutely love the creepy cover and wish the story was as creepy as the cover makes it out to be! Altogether this was a really intriguing and unique read that I think horror fans are really going to enjoy.