Little, Brown and Company, 2016. ISBN 978-0-316-38783-5

Summary, from cover:
In this gripping page-turner, an ex-agent on the run from her former employers must take one more case to clear her name and save her life.

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 so 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 realizes 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 specialized skill set. And she knows once again why she’s one of the world’s bestselling authors.

My thoughts (spoilers ahead):
The Chemist is good, but not excellent. This novel doesn’t live up to the hype on its cover by the summary or the blurbs. While the characters were great, there were some inconsistencies that perturbed me. I also take issue with how the book is framed in regard to plot and topic. Overall, The Chemist is readable, but not recommendable.

The cover summary explicitly calls The Chemist a “tautly plotted novel.” It, most definitely, is not. A tautly plotted novel would not be over 500 pages in length, and it would not have long passages where the protagonist waffles about her decisions. The foreshadowing moments are blatantly obvious. Nothing is hidden in between the lines. I felt that the author was spelling everything out for the reader, and while “the department” didn’t have a name, the name was useless when we were given an explicit description of what “the department” did. There was no mystery, no redirection. The department does X, the protagonist does Y. It was all out there for the reader to see.

Except for one thing- how our protagonist went from being indifferent to deeply in love. I felt that in the chapter or two between how our protagonist interrogates him and falling in love with him… felt rushed. While the reader had to wait for her to tell her love interest her feelings, the internal monologue we read essentially put forth that she was in love with him the entire time. Plus, everything the love interest did felt more like love-bombing than actual romantic overtures. Nothing felt genuine between the two of them. Even approaching the situation from the “two traumatized people find love” angle, their interactions felt a little shallow to me.

I do enjoy reading political/spy/black ops thrillers, although I don’t enjoy them when the book focuses on a House–of–Cards style corruption situation. It only works for House of Cards! Give it up, people! The Corrupt Politician trope is too overplayed in books like this. Especially when everything is tinged with a “don’t trust the government, it’s out to get you!” messaging. I would have been more fascinated by double-crossing, the relationship between the two handlers… anything except it all coming down to a corrupt politician who wants to clean up his act before running for President. C’mon. Be a little more original- the author is capable of it!

Overall, The Chemist was OK- not something I would read again, or recommend to anyone else. If I needed to recommend a Meyer book, I would recommend Twilight. Nothing about The Chemist felt fresh or different from other works in the genre. I feel that the plot, in effort to remain tight- ended up skipping over things that mattered. The tropes at play in this book felt stale, and weren’t interesting enough for me. If Stephenie Meyer tries again, I know I would read it- just not this book ever again.