Kate A. Boorman cements herself as one of YA's best haunting thriller writers today with Into The Sublime, a whirlwind novel which will live on in readers minds long after finishing.
From the blurb;
'Amelie Desmarai's story begins believably enough: Four girls from a now-defunct thrill-seeking group planned an epic adventure to find a subterranean lake that Colorado locals call the Sublime. Legend has it that the lake has the power to change things for those who risk - and survive - the descent. Each of the girls had her own reason for going. For Amelie, it was a promise kept to her beloved cousin, who recently suffered a tragic accident during one of the group's dares.
'But as her account unwinds, and the girls' personalities and motives are drawn, things get complicated. Amelie is hardly the thrill-seeking type, and it appears she's not the only one with the ability to deceive. Worse yet, Amelie is covered in someone's blood, but whose, exactly? And where's the fourth girl?
'Is Amelie spinning a tale to cover her guilt? Or was something inexplicable waiting for the girls down there? Amelia is the only one with answers, and she's insisting on an explanation that is more horror/fantasy than reality. Maybe the truth lies somewhere in between?
'After all strange things inhabit dark places. And sometimes we bring the dark with us.'
With an untrustworthy narrator leading this story we are left constantly questioning what we are being told, and trying to piece together what really happened in the dark. Spilt into two perspectives this story jumps from the present to the past, drawing us out of Amelie's haunting narration just as the tension reaches it's breaking point, and into the perspective of Deputy Vargas, the police officer receiving Amelie's blood-drenched account.
Vargas helps us to fill in some of the blanks, drawing our minds to conclusions throughout the tale, and bringing a sceptical, realistic, opinion to Amelie's dark story. However Vargas is as enraptured by Amelie's story as the reader is, and swiftly falls into a state of eagerness as she prompts Amelie to continue.
These breaks into Vargas's perspective help to alleviate the mounting tension of Amelie's story, one which starts off light enough, before being consumed by the darkness the four girls meet beneath the earth, and the fear which hounds their every step.
Into The Sublime is a novel you'll want to read with the lights on, as it forces the reader to question what is real and what is imagined; pulled from the girls minds as they face off against the inscrutable darkness.
Boorman skilfully draws us into the arms of the Sublime, making us feel as eager and scared as the girls as they delve deeper into the the caves, searching out the secrets which lay beneath. All the while she keeps us firmly on our toes, revealing how little we know about each of the characters, how little we can truly trust our own narrator, and swiftly turns this tale into a mystery where we find ourselves reaching for explanations, pointing the blame at anyone close enough.
Readers will want to re-read Into The Sublime, as Boorman skilfully creates more questions than answers with each tantalizing chapter, and though she plucks at our deep rooted fears of the unknown and draws tension to it's height, readers will find this novel impossible to put down.
We give Into The Sublime Five Stars
ISBN - 978-1-250-19170-0
Hardback US Cover Price - $18.99
Comments