Book Review- Elixir by Hilary Duff

Elixir by Hilary Duff

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Elixir is a suspenseful, confusing, and epic telling of the twisted fate of an innocent girl. Seventeen-year-old Clea Raymond is living in the spotlight. Her father is a renowned surgeon and her mother is a well known politician, so she is constantly being watched by the public eye. Her only escape is her photography, and she has a job as a photojournalist, allowing her to travel to many exotic places. After her father mysteriously disappears while on a humanitarian mission, she starts to notice a strange man appearing in all of the pictures that she takes, a beautiful young man - that she has never before seen. Her best friend Ben, who happened to work for her father, saw the pictures, and remembered that in her dad’s office, there were pictures of her as a child with the same man in the background! He was sitting at the table behind them at a restaurant, or in a crowd of people at a public event. Soon after this, she starts having cycles of dreams where she is four other girls, from four different time periods, all in love with this man - the man from the pictures. She would either be Olivia in Renaissance Italy, trying to perfect her watercolor paintings; Catherine in rural England, a hundred years later, racing on a horse bareback through the countryside; Anneline, and stage actress in France’s finest nineteenth-century stages; or Delia, who lived during the Prohibition-era Chicago. When fate brings her and this man, Sage, together, it stirs up powerful emotions, and some trouble. The closer they get, the deeper they are drawn into the mystery behind her father’s disappearance, and they discover the truth behind their century old connection. The secret that they have to face, has Sage, Ben, and Clea racing against time to decode their past and save their futures.
“So what can we do?” I asked, “How can we find my father?
“And the Elixir of Life,” Ben added.
“There is no Elixir of Life” I said.
“Yes, there is,” Ben and Sage chorused.
One theory that both Ben and Clea’s father had was that somehow the Elixir of Life was involved with this strange man. The Elixir of Life is something that can grant eternal life; but most people believe it to be a legend, or a myth. Clea’s father, during an arceological dig in Italy, found the vials to the Elixir, but found so sign of the actual thing. When Ben and Clea are in Rio for one of Clea’s photography destinations, she sees Sage on the beach and runs after him. She and Ben chase him for a while and finally meet Sage (after running from them, he only came back after Clea twisted her ankle). While they are talking, they are attacked by people wearing all black, and somehow manage to lose them after running. They find a deserted cave, and Sage tells them everything that he knows about who was chasing them and why. Apparently, there are people who are protecting the Elixir, and Sage believes that they captured her father because they wanted to know where to find it again. Clea doesn't believe a word of it, but she ends up agreeing with the two boys that they had to find a woman who may know a lot about the Elixir, let her show them the way to it, and use it to bribe her father’s kidnappers.
“I knew he was telling the truth. His eyes were affectionate. I was his, not just in the past, but today and forever, and nothing had ever made me feel more secure.”
On their long journey to meet the “dark lady” that would perhaps lead them to the elixir, Clea finds herself falling in love with Sage. She can’t help herself. She wants to believe otherwise, then just stops trying to kid herself. The only problem is what lies ahead. So many dangerous secrets and mysteries await the trio, and nobody could have guessed what ends up happening in the end.
I would recommend this book to anyone who likes suspense, action, love, and mystery. I usually could guess the ending of books, but I had no idea what was around the corner, what would happen in the next chapter, or the next. I enjoyed reading this book, and it always kept my attention. I didn’t like the ending though, only because it ended shortly, after the beginning and middle were so long and detailed. I also didn’t like the way the characters ended up, but I couldn’t imagine a different ending. It was real. No fairy tale ending, but sort of a slap of reality. It was amazingly written, and I have no doubt that I will be re-reading it.



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