Niki’s Review: The Chemist by Stephanie Meyer

This was recommended to me by someone on Twitter. I read the Twilight series. It didn’t change my life, but I enjoyed them. I fully understand the issues people had with them (not the sparkly vampire part, authors are allowed to try new things). The relationship between Bella and Edward wasn’t healthy and a lot of the things that were ‘romantic’ in that book are…dangerous. But, it had its appeal.

The Host, however, I love. I know people have issues with that one too and everyone is entitled to their opinion, but I’ve read it a couple times and, honestly, I’m not even ashamed to say it’s one I’d read again. I did get a little ick when the non-consent part of the story and the issues with Wanda and stealing a body were pointed out to me. I admit I hadn’t read it since and who knows if that will color my opinion of it if/when I do.

Yet, somehow, The Chemist slipped under my radar. That’s a shame. It was an enjoyable read and Meyer is really improving as an author, in my eyes. Was this book perfect? No. Does Meyer still struggle with her understanding of healthy love? Yeah, I think so. But there are a lot of books that have terrible messages about love that are wildly popular, and this is an adult book, not YA. Also, there is a story behind it besides ‘the love story’. So, I’m whatever about the love part. It wasn’t a turn off for me, but if you like your love stories to have healthy boundaries and, you know, be realistic…None of Meyer’s novels are going to be your cup of tea. Really though, Jason Bourne is terrible to Marie in the books and they fall in love and it works out for them (the books are wildly different than the movies). If he can be awful to his love interest and it works out for him, Alex can be awful to hers in this book and it’s fine. For them. I don’t want my love life to look anything like either of theirs, but that’s what makes books so fun to read.

I remember a big complaint about Twilight (and it’s one of those ‘once you see it you can’t unsee it’ kinda things) is how often everyone murmurs and whispers and otherwise talks at a strange volume. There was one part in The Chemist where they whispered and murmured quite a bit and it was really the only thing in the entire book that made me think of Twilight. And it was very brief. This book wasn’t paranormal at all. There was no magic, no aliens, no vampires. It was all very grounded in the real world. So, if it’s the fantastical elements of Stephanie Meyer that you love, this is missing that. It’s still a romance, which isn’t always my favorite, but this was enjoyable. To say it’s missing anything though, seems misleading.

If you removed the romantic entanglement, everything about the book stayed in place. Take the romance out of Twilight and I don’t know what’s left. Take the romance out of the Host, and it was still enjoyable, but it would lose a lot of what made it fun to read. Take the romance out of The Chemist, and it’s still a good story. Truthfully, I think this one might have been better without the romance, but that could just be me. Either way, I liked the book. It was well written, the pacing was great (for Meyer. Truthfully, this book could have been chopped way down and been fine, but that’s just not how she rolls so it’s fine), the characters were developed and really, it was just a fun read. I’m glad that random guy on Twitter suggested it and I wish I could remember who it was that told me to pick it up so I could say thanks!

***Spoilers Ahead***

We meet a woman who admits she changes her name all the time. For the sake of clarity, I’m going to tell you right now that her name is (not really) Alex and just use that name even though it changes a few times. Sometimes things like this can get confusing, and I applaud Meyer because I never once stumbled over ‘who is this new person? Oh damn, it’s the MC with a new name again *sigh*’ and that’s nice.

Alex is in a library sneakily stalking a free computer to check her email and to steal a book. She is 4 hours away from home and knows that checking the email will put her at great risk, which is why she’s so far away. We know that Alex is either super paranoid or someone really dangerous is after her.

Her email has a terrifying message. It’s from an old coworker. Her old employer has found her, and they aren’t trying to hide it. They are using their real email addresses. The message is a plea for her help. She knows it’s a trap but there is still something inside her that knows if the message is genuine, lives are on the line, and she could save them.

We learn she’s been running from her former employer for 3 years and they are trying to kill her. And that she was based out of DC before her life was in danger.

She responds to the email, agreeing to meet even though she’s sure it’s a trap and then leaves the library and takes 6 hours to circle her way home. Just in case. She gets home and goes through her extensive night routine. Booby traps all over, a fake ‘body’ in the bed, and a gas mask for herself as she curls up in a sleeping bag in the tub. It’s a lot. She’s worried but confirms that it’s saved her in the past.

The next day, while waiting for her old friend, Carston, she thinks through the first attempt on her life at the lab she worked at. They got her partner, but with dumb luck, she’d made it out alive. Later, while she was on the run, they’d sent contract killers, which her booby traps had neutralized. She used a poison made from peach pits for her traps. Apparently, it was effective, cheap, painful, and easy to make. So that’s cool. Who knew peach pits could be used for such things?

She goes through her process of checking into a hotel and it’s long. I don’t mind when things are overexplained, but if you don’t like Stephen King because his books are three times longer than they need to be, this probably isn’t the book for you either. She talks about the clerks she talks to, the phones ringing, the ID she used, where the name came from, the lies…and its all told in real time. Because you know how exciting checking into a hotel is? Now imagine reading that. For several pages. This has been a complaint I’ve always heard of Meyer, but like I said, it doesn’t usually bother me. Just now that I know it’s a thing, I see it when it happens. And it does happen a lot.

But anyway…

She checks in and starts talking about her fancy jewelry. She doesn’t just have the peach poison, you see. She wears three rings with poison on hidden barbs. Okay, plausible. A locket with no dangers, but with a picture of her old boss’s child (to make things ‘difficult’ for him should some rando find her body somewhere). The chain to the necklace, however, was deadly and so on and so on (and so on. Literally she goes on about her secret weapons for two pages. It’s a lot). I’ve never been one to wear weapons so who knows how realistic any are. I like the idea though so yeah, I’m good most of them.

The only one I’m a bit concerned about are the earrings. They are these thin glass globes designed to break if someone pulls her hair too hard. I feel like if she wore these and fell, or someone ran into her, or the wind picked up and blew them too hard, they would break. They let out a poison gas and she plans to just hold her breath (because she can just hold her breath for fifteen minutes, no problem-is that possible?). Those seem like just the worst things ever to put near your face…but what do I know?

She also has ‘knife shoes’ with blades that pop out to both the front and back. Seriously, I know they exist in movies…but do they in real life? If they did, I feel like there are very few situations where they would be useful. And how do you get the blade out? Or back in, for that matter. So weird. I’m not convinced about these but for a different reason than the earrings.

She then goes on for two and a half more pages about being disguised as a boy to stalk her old boss (Carston) and casually changing into a girl while walking through a park toward him. And now I’m seeing it. On reread, she uses way too many words and probably could have edited this down quite a bit. On one read through, I admit, none of this bothered me. But as I go through it all again for this review, there is a lot of fluff. Does it bother me? I don’t know. Could some have been cut? Well, yeah. I know people complain about this with her books so if you were hoping this one had gone beyond that…No. Meyer still explains everything about everything in great detail.

So, she sneaks up on Carston and he’s not totally surprised. We do learn her real name with the interaction: Juliana. I’m still going to call her Alex though. Carston tells her the people in charge that want her dead are gone and she’s safe now. He says they want her, no, need her back. Only she can save hundreds of people from a biological. She doesn’t really believe him, but she asks questions anyway.

She gets files from him detailing the plot against the country and still is certain it’s a trap to kill her. Still, she hides away and reads it all. Meyer goes on for almost 3 whole pages about the process it took to get the documents. So, that was kind of a lot.

The bad dude’s name is Daniel. She now believes there is a true threat. Why create such a lie? If they wanted to kill her, they’d had the chance. Since it made no sense to give her all the info she had, only to later kill her, it must be true that this Daniel was bad news. I’ll be honest, I’m super trusting so I was pretty much on board with the explanation, even though I knew there was something fishy going on. There had to be. Otherwise, there would be no plot. This is a book, so there has to be something going on. Still, I believe Daniel is a bad guy. I also believe they are still trying to kill Alex.

Either way, the attack was set to go down in 5 days. Dun dun dun.

For the next 5 pages, she talks about how she acquired enough money to stay on the run for years.

She finds Daniel and starts to follow him around. She tracks him on a train and puts her plan in motion. Before she has a chance to drug and kidnap him, he notices her and…flirts a little bit. Though it does throw her for a loop, she still jabs him with a needle with some kind of sedative and hauls him off the train when he gets ‘sick’ and needs ‘help’. He continues to tirelessly flirt with her while she leads him away.

There is this line where she tells him that if he still likes her after one night together, she will go out with him again. Right there I knew, these two were ending up together. The man she drugged and kidnapped and was set to murder thousands? Yeah, falling in love with each other. So that’s interesting.

She dopes him up again once he’s in her car and drives to a makeshift lab she’s created just to interrogate Daniel. She strips him naked and ditches his clothing and other belongings before hauling this huge man, by herself, to the ‘lab’. She does use a dolly. Still…That would be quite a task.

Then it’s bedtime and in the morning, she gets to work. She wakes him and shows him all her torture tools and explains she doesn’t really use them because her methods work so much better. Then she injects him with something that causes ten minutes of terrible pain. He swears he knows nothing, and she almost believes him, yet, she must torture this man. The man she’s falling in love with.

After a while of getting nowhere, she shows him pictures of him doing bad things and she starts to realize Daniel isn’t her guy. The bad guy is a guy that looks like Daniel but isn’t. Before she can sort it out, a plane flies over and she puts Daniel back to sleep right when she realizes it’s a trap.

She waits for the attack and realizes she’s been played. Maybe the attack was real, but the timeframe was surely wrong. The barn is booby trapped though so no matter which window or door the attacker comes in, he will go down. But, oh wait, he comes through the roof. So damn. Booby traps are worthless.

She gets attacked and in the pitch black, he kicks her ass. And breaks her nose. I’ve broken my nose before and damn. Poor Alex. That hurts and, besides that, the blood is endless. She realizes the reason he’s winning is that he has night vision goggles. She disarms all her traps and opens the door where she is sure there is an army to take her in. There is only a dog. A big dog, but still. No one else.

He asks for Daniel. She sees his face pieces start to fit together. He’s Daniel’s twin. She does manage to trick him and a gas is released that knocks out Twin, and Dog and she’s able to cut her restraints and take in her situation. She also takes a moment to find and destroy the tracker in Daniel she’d missed so if anyone besides Twin was watching, they lost contact.

After Twin wakes up, they talk it out. He’d been black ops CIA and faked his death (after taking out the threat they’d baited Alex with). Their respective bosses set up an elaborate trap where Alex takes Daniel and fishes Twin out of hiding and at least one of them dies. With some luck, both.

Daniel convinces them to team up.

(This book is so much longer than ones I usually review. I’m 150 pages in, but it’s over 500 pages long so I’m just going to cut out huge chunks so this review isn’t 100 pages long by itself)

They head to one of Twin’s safehouses. It’s out in the country and she’s uncomfortable with every aspect of it, including the fact that Twin has someone else living there. A guy who does all the face-to-face parts of life for him. Twin is needlessly rude to Alex and Daniel just simps over her constantly.

Twin goes off on some recon and Daniel, being the idiot that he is, goes to the grocery store. No, sorry, three grocery stores. Twin made sure to make it clear that no one in like a hundred-mile radius had ever seen his face and then Daniel goes out just wandering about and being friendly with folks. Alex freaks out. Then, almost immediately she decides oh well, what’s done is done and people will probably forget it. So okay then. Also, when he starts making all kinds of fancy foods for her like sandwiches(…no seriously, he makes all kinds of fancy stuff but the first one she fawns over is a giant sandwich), she’s almost happy he went. Remember how he asked her on a date after she drugged him right before she kidnapped him? Well since they can’t go out, he makes a fancy dinner, and they watch a movie at home. She asks him over and over again what he sees in her and when he tries to kiss her, she moves and tries to attack him before she comes to her senses and then asks again why he would like plan-old-beat-up-faced her. It’s honestly laid on a little too thick. Like, it works in YA because kids are insecure, and adults are too. I’ve asked people these same questions, but it’s just too much. About eleven pages too much in this particular spot.

The next morning, she’s in love with Daniel which means that her and Twin’s weak spot are now the same, which is dangerous. There is a line that says THE DAY DRAGGED. And honestly, that’s how I feel about this section of the book. It’s just…boring. It was fine on the first read but as I’m going back through it for this review, meh. Nothing is really happening. I mean, she’s falling in love, which is great for her, but it doesn't need to take 90 pages when nothing else is happening. Or maybe it does. Stephanie Meyer has sold more copies of her work than I could ever dream of so she’s doing something right. I just have to remember that romance is not my go to so sometimes it bogs me down. But if it’s your thing, maybe this is the perfect number of pages dedicated to it.

Then his trip to town comes back to bite them in the butt when a nationwide story airs about him being missing and flashing his picture all over the news. Now everyone in the tiny town he visited might give away his location. There is an attack, and a bunch of the dogs all get shot, which bummed me out. The random dude at Twin’s safehouse also gets killed. Alex and Daniel escape.

Yada yada for a while. Daniel and Alex hook up. Kevin is safe and they make phone contact with him… Alex and Daniel steal a car so they can blend in a bit while on the road to meet back up with Twin.

They meet up in this insane place and come up with a plan to get their lives back. I don’t want to go into too many details and spoil this whole part because some part of the book has to be fresh when you decide to read it. However, I’m going to give some broad spoilers.

They win but still stay in hiding because, you know, no one is actively trying to kill them, but they aren’t Free free. But the three of them are fine with it. The ending is so…I don’t know. Nicolas Sparks meets Jason Bourne, maybe.

(This spoils the very ending of the book so seriously stop reading if you’re planning to read this book).

They open a restaurant but somehow are still in hiding and Daniel is this amazing chef so of course the restaurant is a massive hit and Twin and Alex can live safely and Daniel can still live out his dreams. Food network reaches out and offers them a spot on a Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives kind of show, which they turn down and the food network is just BLOWN AWAY that someone would say no to them.

The End.

And I realize I recommended this book and then pointed out some serious flaws in it, and yeah. I stand by that. Meyer is weird about some of the things she finds romantic but if you’re someone who enjoyed Twilight or The Host, you already know that. If her sometimes dangerous ideas of love trigger you, you’re already not going to read her. And that is totally ok. Meyer’s writing is enjoyable to me even when it has flaws. I like it. This book is LONG but I do enjoy it. Also, if you just can’t get through reading books this long anymore, I see that there is an audiobook and I love those while I drive, so you can give it a shot there. I gave it a listen; it’s narrated very well. So, if you like Twilight but wish everyone was dealing with adult problems and the supernatural stuff just didn’t do it for you, give this bad boy a go.