Book Review: Sublime

Sublime

By: Christina Lauren

Published by: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers

Release date: October 14, 2014

Genre: YA paranormal

336 pages

Buy it at Amazon, IndieBound, Book Depository, or Barnes & Noble

Source: ARC kindly provided by publisher

In a word, this book was disappointing for me. I was hoping for a good ghost story with a little excitement, a good love story, and a positive resolution. What I got instead was not something I would recommend to my reader friends.

I can’t find in the book evidence of the authors' purpose. I can't pinpoint any positive character development, or a lesson learned. Major plot points, like why this area is special enough to harbor several walkers, and why Lucy is drawn to Colin in the first place, are left unexplained. I don’t get it. Where are the redeeming qualities?

The book contains some material that is, in my opinion, irresponsible to market to a YA audience. The graphic description of intimacy, for example- I suppose it could be argued that it’s there to illustrate the raw need for each other that the characters feel, but in a sex scene, that’s universal. It misses the mark and seems gratuitous. The other point that bothers me is the sensationalism of self-injury: a main character purposely injures himself, multiple times and with the help of others, to give himself a few minutes of being able to make physical contact with a girl. Even as a possible cautionary tale, it doesn’t quite work; the consequences of this behavior aren’t presented as negative.

I didn’t get the satisfaction of a fun, scary read either. Lucy is described as “terrifying” at certain times, but there is a stark lack of description to back the use of the adjective. How can she be a properly intimidating character if she spends the majority of the book not understanding what she is or what her purpose is?

There are a few bits of dialogue that are amusingly snarky. This redeeming quality is what gave me false hope for an ending that would make some sense to me, and kept me reading. Perhaps I’m too optimistic after all.

Summary:

True love may mean certain death in a ghostly affair of risk and passion from New York Times bestselling duo Christina Lauren, authors ofBeautiful Bastard. Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author ofShatter Me calls Sublime “a beautiful, haunting read".

When Lucy walks out of a frozen forest, wearing only a silk dress and sandals, she isn’t sure how she got there. But when she sees Colin, she knows for sure that she’s here for him.

Colin has never been captivated by a girl the way he is by Lucy. With each passing day their lives intertwine, and even as Lucy begins to remember more of her life—and her death—neither of them is willing to give up what they have, no matter how impossible it is. And when Colin finds a way to physically be with Lucy, taking himself to the brink of death where his reality and Lucy’s overlap, the joy of being together for those brief stolen moments drowns out everything in the outside world. But some lines weren’t meant to be crossed…