Elixir

 

Title:

Elixir

Author:
Hilary Duff

Series:
Elixir, book 1

About the Author (Goodreads):
Hilary Erhard Duff is an American actress, pop singer-songwriter and entrepreneur. After gaining fame for playing the title role in the television show Lizzie McGuire, Duff went on to have a film career; her most commercially successful movies include Cheaper by the Dozen (2003), The Lizzie McGuire Movie (2003), and A Cinderella Story (2004).

Duff has expanded her repertoire into pop music, with four RIAA certified Platinum albums and over thirteen million albums sold worldwide. Her first studio album, Metamorphosis (2003), was certified triple platinum and she followed it up with two more platinum albums, Hilary Duff (2004) and Most Wanted (2005). Duff's last studio album, Dignity, was released in April 2007 and was certified Gold in August 2007.

She has also launched a clothing line, "Stuff by Hilary Duff", and two exclusive perfume collections with Elizabeth Arden. Duff and her mother were listed as producers for the movie Material Girls, As of April 2008, her upcoming films include the action thriller War, Inc., animated comedy Foodfight!, and independent films Greta and Safety Glass..

Book Summary (Goodreads):
Clea Raymond has felt the glare of the spotlight her entire life. The daughter of a renowned surgeon and a prominent Washington DC politician, she has grown to be a talented photojournalist who takes refuge in a career that allows her to travel to the most exotic parts of the world. But after Clea’s father disappears while on a humanitarian mission, Clea’s photos begin to feature eerie, shadowy images of a strange and beautiful man—a man she has never seen before.

When fate brings Clea and this man together, she is stunned by the immediate and powerful connection she feels with him. As they grow closer, they are drawn deep into the mystery behind her father’s disappearance, and they discover the centuries old truth behind their intense bond. Torn by a dangerous love triangle and haunted by a powerful secret that holds their fates, together they race against time to unravel their pasts in order to save their lives—and their futures.

I'd Recommend to:
Fantasy fans looking for a quick read  

My rating:
5/5

My Thoughts:

I can't remember the last time I read through a book so fast. I only stopped to sleep because it was 2am. If I had started it sooner, I would have finished it in one sitting. 

The author of the book is listed as Hilary Duff with Elise Allen, so I was like I wonder how much is actually written by Elise Allen and just has Hilary's name on it, but reading it, it's definitely written by Hilary Duff and she did a great job. 

Everyone knows fantasy/supernatural/paranormal is my jam. However, I've never read anything like this before. The reviews on Goodreads seemed to hate the book and said it was unoriginal and a copycat of everything else at the time, but that wasn't my personal experience so I really enjoyed it.

Not gonna lie, parts of it were super scary and I was not prepared for it. But maybe it was more scary because it was nearly 2am and I was in a dark house by myself. After all, it is for teens, not horror-obsessed adults. 

It starts off with the main girl, Clea, on a three-week vacation with her best friend. Her father had gone missing about a year ago and she was still struggling with it. Clea is a photojournalist, so when she gets home from her trip instead of dreaming, where she's haunted by possibilities of what could have happened to her father, she gets on her computer to go through the photos she took of the trip. It's there that she notices the same man in all of the photos, in all different locations. In one photo, he's even floating 100ft in the air! Confused as to what he might be, she takes photos of her own bedroom that she's currently in and he appears again in photos of her closet even tho there is no one in her closet. Yeah man, that's the scary part. 

After she notices him in the photos, she starts to have super vivid dreams of him. Unlike the nightmares about her father, these dreams are super pleasurable and now she wants to sleep all the time to be with him. But, she gets an opportunity to go on assignment in Rio, the place her father went missing. Of course, she wants to go explore his last known location to try to find out what happened to him! 

In Rio she sees the man of her photos and dreams! She chases after him and the story gets intense. 

Oops I forgot to mention her father hired an international somebody or another to help protect her on her photojournalism trips, and they're super close even though they've only known each other for two years (in this life). He plays a really big role in this story as well.

It was very interesting and action-packed. Like I said I literally couldn't put it down. 

However, the ending was a let down. I understand they left it that way so that you'd read the next book in the series (which will have to wait for me as neither my local bookstore nor any of the county libraries have a copy) but the ending focused way more on the love triangle then on her father's disappearance, which I thought was a major point of the plot. Goodreads also said the second one was far worse than the first but that it was good at providing a bit of closure the first one lacked, so once I get my hands on a copy, I will be finishing it (and probably the third as well). Let's hope Goodreads is wrong again and it's just as good as the first.