Sublime by Christina Lauren ARC Review (MAJOR SPOILERS)

Sublime by Christina Lauren

Paperback, 318 pages

Published by Simon & Schuster

Expected Publication Date: October 14, 2014

Buy it: Amazon | B&N | Book Depository |

Rating: 2/5 Stars

Synopsis: True love may mean certain death in a ghostly affair of risk and passion from New York Times bestselling duo Christina Lauren, authors of Beautiful Bastard. Tahereh Mafi, New York Times bestselling author of Shatter 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…

Before I say anything other about the book, I have to say that suicide is a serious and terrible thing. The fact that this book romanticizes suicide, is not only disturbing, it's dangerous. There are so many people who contemplate taking their own lives and this book makes it sound like a good idea. 

A tragic romance story from the POVs of both lovers. It's a YA novel, but it read more like a romance novel with all the raunchy scenes and vague details. It was like reading the movie Ghost but the couple are teenagers, and they never knew each other before our heroine died. I liked it, but I didn't love it. If you think about what I said above, it made it really hard to like this book because of how disturbed I felt.

Strengths/Likes: 

1) I found the descriptions of Lucy and Colin's feelings for each other really moving. When they were talking about sex or having sex anyway. I'm not against sex, but it seems like that's mostly what their relationship was based on.

2) I generally really liked the writing style of the novel, it had good emotion and flow. The dual POVs were definitely separate voices and people. The whole book was well written. 

3)  Jay was really funny and a well written character. I wish I knew more about him. 

Weaknesses/Dislikes:

1) As I've already mentioned, romanticizing suicide is a dangerous and terrible thing. One of my favorite books, Tryst that I featured in my Forgotten Friday meme is a similar story. He's a ghost, and she's not, but both of them are in love and can't be together normally but she doesn't kill herself to be with him or ever considers that to be an option. But in this book, Colin repeatedly puts himself into a position that could kill him, and in the end does so on purpose to be with Lucy because she's gone for three weeks. 

What makes this even more disturbing is how his best friend Jay and his lover Lucy consider his actions as just an ordinary "extreme sport" until Colin's final act. It's horrifying.

2) Details. Or I should say, lack of details. There weren't enough details about the world of the dead. Since it was known that there were other Walkers like Lucy, there should have been encounters with them in the world beyond the lake. There should have been more details about the other couple in the book in the same situation. There should have more details about what exactly Lucy was and their purpose. Especially since there had been several ghosts around. 

3) I didn't like that all of the scenes of Lucy and Collin being together "for real" that all they did was have sex. It seemed like that's all they wanted, that's not love, that's just sex. When apart, their feelings were written beautifully but the fact that the most of the time they were together and they just had sex made it seem like they just thought the other was really hot. 

4) The characters of Maggie and Dot were almost identical in personality and in voice, I had to remind myself over and over 

Favorite Quotes/Moments: 

1) "So they caught this guy because of you?"

He shrugs. "I think so. That's what the article said, anyway." 

She feels her smile form on her face and spread down into her chest, where she never feels hollow when she's with him. "I may have only a pocketful of memories about anything useful, but I do know one thing." 

"What's that?"

"You were my Guardian first, then."

His grin matches hers, but it has a distinctly cocky twist to it. "I like to think so."

2) "Colin and Lucy go to school, he works when he's scheduled, and they spend long nights cocooned in his blankets and wrapped around each other so close that he can't tell where he ends and she begins. But it's not the same.

He tells her she's more than he ever hoped for.

He tells her that he's in love.

He asks her to never leave.

But she does."