The Boundless Sublime

March 1, 2018

Gr 10 Up-Seventeen-year-old Ruby Jane Galbraith is drowning in grief. Her little brother has been killed in a devastating accident that leaves her father in prison and her mother totally bereft. Ruby blames herself and withdraws from the world. But when she meets a beautiful boy named Fox, who is handing out water bottles with the label "Boundless Body Boundless Mind," she sees an opportunity to emerge from grief. As Fox takes Ruby to the Red House, Ruby meets others who all belong to the Institute of the Boundless Sublime. Though her friends immediately call out Fox and his "family" as a cult, Ruby allows herself to be seduced. The pain and sorrow in her life block out everything except Institute, Fox, and eventually Daddy. At the Institute she is given new clothes, an ultra-restrictive diet, and a name. Quickly the dream of the Boundless Sublime gives way to dark and terrifying secrets. Now she must decide just how far she is willing to go. Wilkinson has created a page-turning thriller that twists and turns its way to an explosive conclusion. But more than that, the author has drawn a portrait of how attractive a cult can be to an average, ordinary person. The story moves through scene after unflinching scene of Ruby's descent into the cult and her struggle to leave. The prose does not shy away from the horrors Ruby finds as she tried to question everything about her new community. A suspense-filled read not for the faint-hearted. VERDICT A good choice for most YA shelves.-Elaine Baran Black, Georgia Public Library Service, Atlanta

Copyright 2018 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 1, 2018
A lurid tale of running toward--not from--a cult.Guilt-stricken over her little brother's accidental death, 17-year-old Ruby Jane Gilbraith is depressed and lonely, with a nearly comatose mother and (unbearably) pretentious poseur friends. When the otherworldly and childlike Fox offers her a water bottle and potential inner peace, Ruby follows him to the Institute. In this bleak commune/compound, the allegedly millennia-old leader, Zosimon, aka "Daddy," preaches "elutriation" and exhorts the Boundless family to prepare for battle against the "toxicant" masses. Ruby, now "Heracleitus," recognizes it as a cult but succumbs anyway. Once a doubting "sublimate," Ruby experiences a traumatic montage of physical and psychological abuse until she is a zealot, unable to tell if she is a brainwashed follower or a fearful but conscious and conscientious criminal. An Australian romance/mystery writer, Wilkinson keeps to the former genre's typical girl-redeems-boy trope but swerves into violent thriller/misery-lit territory to produce a grueling, unsettling read combining the sensationalism of satanic-panic public-service announcements with a first-love romance, a journey through grief, and repetitive, incoherent New Age/corporate-buzzword sermons. The setting and secondary characters are often vague, but Ruby's transformations and suffering are depicted with a painful, unflinching focus and clarity. There is no author's note or list of resources for readers who may find themselves stirred to action by any of the many issues raised by the book.Come for the cute boy, stay for the apocalypse, beware the potential triggers. (Thriller/romance. 14-18)

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