Review- The Alchemy of Forever

Title: The Alchemy of Forever
Author: Avery Williams
Series: Incarnation #1
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
Find it here: Amazon, Goodreads
Source: Purchased

Seraphina has been alive since the 1300's, made immortal when the boy she was beginning to love back then, Cyrus, saved her from death with a strange liquid - a method of alchemy that lets them swap bodies with any human being. But now, in modern day America, Sera has decided that she can no longer bear the weight of stealing people's lives so she can keep living on. So she decides to run away from Cyrus and end her stolen existence once and for all. Her plan goes awry when she accidentally takes the body of a dying teenager and feels forced to take over her life. When the lines between Sera and Kailey's identity begin to blur, Sera finds a reason to desire to live once more. But she can't shake the guilt of having taken Kailey's life, even if she was dying. And what if Cyrus finds her?

My thoughts: 

When I first picked up The Alchemy of Forever I was super excited but the cover is just gorgeous and the synopsis sounded amazing! I also needed a book by a debut author for January but that's beside the point. But in the end I was a tab bit disappointed because of the direction it went.

When I started the book, I just ate up the beginning. I thought it was an original and unique idea of being able to separate the soul from the body therefore living as long as they desired. Seraphina comes by this existence by accident when she is stabbed. Her good friend Cyrus is the son of the town's alchemist and they believed they had found a way to separate the soul from the body. They had not tried it yet but since she was dying, he felt like he had no choice and her soul is put into the body of a near-by servant girl. Fast forward almost 800 years where Cyrus, Seraphina and a few others that they've picked up along the way are living in New York. Over the years, Cyrus has become controlling and doesn't let Seraphina out of his sight and she is dying to get away from and to finally die. She makes makes this whole elaborate plot to escape and then it kind of becomes a normal story of a girl just trying to be a teenager and fitting in.

I felt like the story went a little bit downhill from there. It became boring because it was just chronicling the life of a girl who was trying to become the girl of the body she stole. She knew that if she ran away from Cyrus that he was going to do everything in his power to find her. I was just annoyed by how easily she let her guard down and just seemed to forget that Cyrus was looking for her. If felt like there could have been more to the story but maybe the author is just saving all the good stuff for the next book! I give The Alchemy of Forever 3 hearts for originality and creativity with the hope that the next book will be more exciting.