The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer

The Chemist by Stephenie Meyer

Summary

An expert working for an agency so secret, it is unnamed, is on the run from the agency. She has no idea why, but she suddenly became a liability for the agency and has been chased by assassins for the past three years. Her employers find her and ask her to take on one more case and they will take the target off her and leave her to live her life in peace. After taking the job, she is left in a situation more dangerous than before and must fight for her survival under more complicated terms.

My Spin

What have chemists done to deserve this? To be fair, the protagonist, is not actually a chemist. As Juliana/Chris/Alex (*yeah*) does point out, “the Molecular Biologist was probably too big a mouthful.”  How convenient.

I was surprisingly interested in this book from the beginning. It had all the leanings of a great spy thriller and then…

Enter romance novel. *womp womp*

This felt like a strange dream sequence that the author had and tried to grasp upon waking and in turn string together into a coherent novel… and it doesn’t work.

*SPOILER ALERTS*

The foreshadowing is way too obvious and annoying. Each major “reveal” or “shocker” is obvious to you way before it is to the character.

It’s formulaic:

-How do you perform a perfect kill shot on a character and have them survive? Enter creepy medical condition mentioned in beginning of book.

-How do you have a photographic evidence of an illegal crime, but the guy swears it isn’t him under torture? Enter evil twin.

-How does a molecular biologist become able to perform complex surgical procedures? Let’s have her work for the mafia saving hitmen while on the lam.

Meyer has been watching too many soap operas before bedtime.

The male love interest deserves mention only in how incredibly unbelievable and one-dimensional his character reads. A dumb unbelievable googly-eyed one-dimensional puppy. The protagonist cannot be that great at torture and still have the male love interest fall in love with her. You can have it one way or the other, not both.

The book comes to an painful grinding halt when the protagonist and the male love interest sit holed up in a ranch, serenading each other in the kitchen, in a scene that will leave you wondering, “Wait a minute, are you f***ing kidding me?”

I appreciate what Meyer tried to do by jumping out of her comfort zone, but when she falls back on her old devices, she misses the mark completely and turns what could have been a great spy thriller into a dime store romance novel. What could have been a book about smart, resourceful, strong women, becomes trite and superficial.

In short:

Don’t bash on this because the author also wrote Twilight. It sucks in its own right.