REVIEW: The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer

Title: The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer
Pages: 518
Published by: Sphere
Publication date: 8th November 2016
Genre: Thriller
Format: Hardback
Amazon UK – Waterstones

Synopsis:

She used to work for the U.S. government, but very few people ever knew that. An expert in her field, she was one of the darkest secrets of an agency so clandestine it doesn’t even have a name. And when they decided she was a liability, they came for her without warning.

Now she rarely stays in the same place or uses the same name for long. They’ve killed the only other person she trusted, but something she knows still poses a threat. They want her dead, and soon.

When her former handler offers her a way out, she realises it’s her only chance to erase the giant target on her back. But it means taking one last job for her ex-employers. To her horror, the information she acquires makes her situation even more dangerous.

Resolving to meet the threat head-on, she prepares for the toughest fight of her life but finds herself falling for a man who can only complicate her likelihood of survival. As she sees her choices being rapidly whittled down, she must apply her unique talents in ways she never dreamed of.

In this tautly plotted novel, Stephenie Meyer creates a fierce and fascinating new heroine with a very specialised skill set. And she shows once again why she’s one of the world’s bestselling authors.

My review:

This review will contain spoilers! I’m sorry but there was no way to avoid it, there are so many things wrong with this book that I just have to talk about. So if you want to read this I wouldn’t recommend reading this review.

Firstly, I absolutely loved Stephenie’s Twilight books and The Host. I was completely sucked into those books so when I found out about this one I was practically vibrating with excitement because I was finally going to get my hands on her writing again after her huge hiatus! I really loved her books and I was immediately drawn to this one because I love thrillers and this sounded right up my street. However, it sadly didn’t live up to my expectations and was one of the worst books I have ever read. It will probably make my most disappointing 2017 reads at the end of the year!

The start of the book was incredibly boring, it was just a massive info dump and it took me forever to sift through the massive load of information to figure out what was happening. It was explained well but it was just dumped on you all at once, it wasn’t even spaced out you literally got her backstory in the space of 50 pages. One thing I like in books is characters interacting with each other. Speech breaks up all the descriptive stuff and gives you a break from reading massive chunks of paragraphs. But the first 50 pages were massive chunks of paragraphs one after the other and it was so frustrating and annoying reading it. It was not a good start to this book.

The next thing I did not like was the annoying insta-love between Daniel and Alex. It’s more Daniel than Alex because as soon as he lays eyes on her he just knows she is the one and he would do anything to see her face again. At this point my eyes were rolling every five minutes and I was getting increasingly tired of Daniel already and we’d only just met him. Then comes the torture scene which was interesting because the book finally started to increase in pace. Something interesting was finally happening, hurrah! But then it came crashing down and I was back to rolling my eyes and getting so angry I was contemplating DNF’ing this stupid book. I’m not sure if Daniel having a twin brother was a plot twist or not because it was so obvious to me it was ridiculous. Alex didn’t expect that because his brother apparently died but apparently no one in this book knows how to stay dead.

Now I am going to have a massive rant about Daniel. He wakes up only to constantly worry about Alex and ask if she is OK even though he was the one being tortured and then he defends her against his own brother who came to rescue him. He’s all like she didn’t have any choice, she had to torture me, it’s her job blah, blah, blah. I was so angry at this point because this doesn’t even make any sense?? What person would say that to someone who just tortured them?? I’d be calling the police to lock her ass up! And then Daniel gets angry at Kevin for trying to kill her and he is angry because Kevin didn’t tell him he was alive but he’s defending Alex because he apparently loves her even though he just met her and she tortured him??? I’m sorry this review is so negative but seriously this plot was the worst thing ever.

At this point you are about 100 pages in and then after that pretty much nothing happens even though the book is over 500 pages long. For the next 100 or so pages Daniel just constantly moons over Alex and it’s pretty much a does-she-love-me-does-she-not-type thing because Daniel constantly tells her he loves her and she doesn’t say anything back so he’s forced to confront her over his feelings. Alex constantly makes gooey eyes over him and then they cook food, dance and sing in the kitchen and shoot guns. There is also a bunch of dogs with them. It’s really slow paced and boring.

The ONLY good thing about this book was Kevin and his dog Einstein! He was such a funny and sarcastic character. He was the only one with a personality in my opinion. Alex and Daniel might as well have been brick walls. He is also the only character who apparently has a brain and he tells it like it is: Alex is a psycho and Daniel is an idiot. I don’t understand how Stephenie can write a book with such a ridiculous plot and then include a character who disagrees with everything she is writing?? But I am so grateful for Kevin because he made the book so much more bearable and he was my favourite character. I really liked him and amazingly, he is now one of my favourite characters.

I sped through the last 40 pages or so because I was just so relieved it was nearly over. I got really excited towards the end of the book because I thought there was going to be a huge plot twist but then it turned out to be pretty boring. The ending was actually awful. It ended happily obviously but I don’t feel like we got proper closure and I finished the book feeling more annoyed than anything. I didn’t really care for the epilogue because it was just some random character who gave us a glimpse of the life the actual main characters were living now.

Overall I am very disappointed because I was expecting a lot better. The book was described as being a gripping page turner but, in my opinion, it was neither of those things. I would definitely not recommend this book to anyone who is thinking about reading it.

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