A review by tea_tales_tomes
The Accidental Alchemist by Gigi Pandian

3.0

I've seen some pretty intensely negative reviews for this book and I must admit that when I started listening to it, I was very skeptical. It was actually not bad at all. This is a murder mystery featuring a 300-year old alchemist who wants to live a normal life and the gargoyle that she encounters while unpacking at her new place. I might add that this is a gargoyle that was brought to life by alchemy many years ago and this is a gargoyle who loves to cook. The parts of the book that most readers said they hated about was actually the parts of the book that I loved most - detailed descriptions of vegan meals (and I'm not even vegan). Give me fiction that provides endless details of meals being prepared and people enjoying these meals any day and I will devour the story. It doesn't matter if the meals are vegan, meat and potatoes, desserts, or even Hannibal Lector making gourmet meals of human flesh. I do agree that some food descriptions were not well incorporated into the story but hey, I'm not overly fussy about foody fiction. I felt that the book could have been a lot better because it has such an interesting premise but the contrived romance and the lame resolution to the murder mystery didn't make me want to rave about the book.