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Trouble Follows You–starting over as a PI
Trouble Follows You
By Bonnie Edwards
Barbara Black is the protagonist of Trouble Follows You and she tells her story from a first person point of view. Thirty-five and recently divorced from a philandering husband, she strikes out to become a Private Investigator with financial survival as her goal. She works part time following up potential insurance cheats for a larger investigations company. She drums up her own first PI case when the wife of an author Barbara had heard speak at an event is shot and the husband is accused of the murder. The husband is a creep, but claims his innocency, and Barbara takes the case.
While involved in searching out background information for her first case, she gets a second case. Her ex-husband wants her to do a deep background check on his current wife. With the promise of good monetary compensation served up with a side of potential revenge, Barbara takes the case and soon finds herself following some shady characters from Tucson to Oklahoma.
I enjoyed this cozy mystery. The plot is good with threads and motivations that keep the reader guessing. While the investigation of murder is serious, the author manages to inject humor throughout. From time to time, in cozy mysteries, the actions of the protagonist do occasionally step over the legal line and sometimes are not quite believable. Trouble Follows You drifts into these territories increasing the reader’s enjoyment. The book is, after all, fiction and a great escape from more serious tomes. The author lives in Tucson, Arizona, which is the major setting for her books.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: 1. #1 in the Adventures of Babs Black series which currently has 3 books in the series.
2. Clean cozy mystery with exactly 5 offensive words in the whole book.
3. There is another author by the same name who writes erotic romances.
Publication: December 6, 2019—Deadly Press
Memorable Lines:
I know teachers. If the plan was a cooperative one among them, they’d still be arguing about who got to pull the trigger.
“Confident, a little brassy, quite sure that she was right about everything. What I mean to say is over-confident and obnoxiously brazen, but my original statement seemed so much more proper.”
There is not much in this world that chocolate won’t solve. The combination of ice cream and chocolate is the universal cure for whatever ails you.
This Promised Land–clean, inspirational novel
This Promised Land
By Cathy Gohlke
Although the roots of the story related in This Promised Land date back to 1940, most of the events occur in the early 1990’s. The setting is Wetherill Pickering’s Christmas Tree Farm in New Scrivelsby, Virginia, where the Pickering Family works hard to scrape a living from the land during the Depression. The protagonist is Ginny Dee, retiring from a job in a gardening center in 1992. She has worked hard to achieve an internship in an English garden park. As she prepares to go, she receives a letter from a lawyer, informing her of the death of her estranged brother and asking her to visit him to answer some questions about the land she grew up on.
Her return to New Scrivelsby brings up memories, good and bad, and initiates many questions about her past. Her brother had been lying to her for all of her adult life about their parents and their rejection of her. Meanwhile, Ginny Dee, a childless widow, discovers she has family—two nephews, one with anger problems who is married to a sweet woman and the other an alcoholic with three adorable children who live with him in a truck and fear being returned to foster care. Everyone has an issue, but none of them are bad people. When Ginny Dee meets with the lawyer, she discovers that her overbearing brother had made some extremely bad business decisions and the family is likely to lose the tree farm.
Life becomes even more complicated when the oldest child, Arlo, wanders into a marijuana plot causing the pot growers to try to accelerate the tree farm’s decline in dangerous ways. There are a lot of twists and turns as the family, and later the community, try to save the farm. A stray dog, Bailey, performs a heroic act and quickly wins a place in the struggling family. This book is hard to put down as the reader wants the family to overcome the odds that are not in their favor—either in finances or relationships.
As the characters work through their various issues, they learn to deal with them by praying and trusting God. There is spiritual growth for both the main characters and others in the community who have their eyes opened to the difficulties of others. They learn to look beyond a person’s history and move past stereotypes.
I recommend this book for readers who want a clean, inspirational novel with action, interesting characters, and a touch of romance.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Christian, Fiction, Women’s Fiction
Publication: April 8, 2025—Tyndale House
Memorable Lines:
Ginny loved him, or she’d told herself she did, but sometimes she felt she’d loved the man who went away and not the one who came home. She’d tried to, but he was uncommunicative, broken inside and out, and while some of his body had mended, the healing inside his head had never come, so her healing inside had not come either.
“You see good even where others see trouble.” “It’s not about seeing the good right off. It’s about looking for the good, for the image of God in every person.”
“You need to forgive them,” Aunt Ginny Dee whispered. “They can’t change what they don’t see. God will work in them just like He’s working in each of us… in His time, His way—not ours.”
Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man–humorous stereotype of Chinese grandmother
Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man
by Jesse Q. Sutanto
narrated by Eunice Wong
When I began reading Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man, I realized I was missing something. That something was supplied by an audio book: English spoken with a Chinese accent. Immediately the humor began to rise to the top and the feisty Chinese grandmother (wanna be) emerged. Formerly quite lonely, in Sutanto’s first book, the owner of “Vera Wong’s World-Famous Teahouse,” in the process of solving her first mystery, gathers an unlikely group of people under her wing and they become her family. In addition to her biological son Tilly, she discovers more people in need of “community.” Everyone, it seems, has a hard time saying “no” to Vera.
With Vera, one thing leads to another, and she befriends a distraught girl, Millie, outside the police station. In the process of trying to find Millie’s missing friend Thomas, Vera becomes an overnight sensation on “the Instagram” and “the TikTok.” She really is quite funny as a character, and is charming in her attempts to help others and to make sense out of social media. She unwittingly puts herself in danger much to the dismay of Tilly who is a lawyer and his girlfriend Selena, a detective. Tilly does his best to support his mother, and Selena tries to convince her to stay away from investigating, especially after her teashop is vandalized.
Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man is a humorous mystery, but delves into dark crimes. I enjoyed it, but won’t be going back to read the first in the series or future books. For me, it is simply a matter of preference. I try not to choose books with inappropriate language. Vera Wong’s Guide to Snooping on a Dead Man includes a lot of crude language and swearing that I consider unnecessary to tell a good story. I did not let my aversion to the author’s use of profanity affect my rating of this book, however, as I realize the wording may not offend some readers.
Eunice Wong, the narrator, made the Chinese characters come alive and was able to revert well to standard English as appropriate. I did a read/listen for most of the book, but I found that when I just read passages I could “hear” them with the narrator’s voice. That’s how good she is.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Mystery, Women’s Fiction
Notes: 1. #2 in the Vera Wong series, but I had not read the first book in the series, and I found that this book held up well as a standalone.
2. Is much more enjoyable as an audiobook.
3. Contains a lot of unnecessary swearing and crude language.
Publication: book: April 1, 2025—Berkley
audiobook: April 1, 2025—Penguin Audio
Memorable Lines:
She serves Winifred her tea, then leans back and takes a bite of the Korean-French abomination. Of course, as luck would have it, the croissant actually tastes amazing. Quite possibly the best pastry Vera has ever had. The richness of the cheese is perfectly cut through by the sour, spicy kimchi, and all of it wrapped up in buttery, flaky layers.
Last night, Vera has learned that young people are very, very good at faking it. Maybe it has something to do with social media.
“It’s not,” Vera says. I know my rights.” She doesn’t. But she’s hoping she looks like she does. Sometimes, looking like you know things is more important than actually knowing things.
Booked for Revenge–murder in the kitchen
Booked for Revenge
by Karen Rose Smith
Belltower Landing is the setting for this cozy mystery which gives the characters an opportunity for outdoor activities like hiking, paddle boarding, and boating. It is also perfect for having a tourist season. Jazzi and her friend Dawn have combined resources to create a combination tea shop and bookstore. The young ladies also conserve financial resources by living together in an apartment above the shop. In a thread of personal conflict, Dawn’s parents live in the same town and are not happy with this business venture or with the girls’ common interest in finding their birth parents.
The main focus of this book, however, is “The Gentlemen’s Bake-Off.” Tomes and Tea is involved because, as one of many creative promotional ideas, the duo will advertise and sell books written by the judges. They also host a book signing. When there is a murder, Jazzi slowly starts investigating. She has kept her relationship to her mother Daisy quiet to avoid getting drawn into just this type of situation. In her hometown, Daisy has a reputation for solving crimes.
There are many suspects—judges, other competitors, or even someone completely unrelated to the baking competition. I didn’t guess the murderer until the end of the book when the identity becomes quite evident. There are other threads that muddle the investigation, including a hidden camera, loud disputes, and missing evidence.
A little romance comes into play as Jazzi’s friend Parker, an IT specialist, shows signs of interest in Jazzi as more than a friend. Oliver, with an Australian accent, owns The Wild Kangaroo pub, and often shows up when Jazzi needs support. Dawn is drawn to Abe, an EMT/firefighter who is frequently on the scene with medical help.
I enjoyed this cozy mystery for the whodunit puzzle, the interesting characters, and the budding romances. There are a pair of kittens that are fun too. The bookstore setting is a magnet for me, and I am glad to see the young ladies making a success of their enterprise.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: 1. #2 in the Tomes & Tea Mysteries series, but could be read as a standalone.
2. This series is a spinoff from the Daisy’s Tea Garden Mysteries series. There are references to characters in that series, but the author always provides background information to the relationship so there is no confusion. Jazzi, the protagonist in this series is the now-grownup daughter of the protagonist in Daisy’s Tea Garden books.
3. Clean
Publication: April 29, 2025—Kensington
Memorable Lines:
Tomes and Tea’s book club was a little different than most. They didn’t discuss one novel at a session. Readers brought in whatever their latest read was to talk about. This way tourists could drop in and join in too.
“Through the years, I’ve found it’s just as easy to be friendly as impatient. And the interchange can brighten a fan’s day as well as mine.”
The Fisherman’s Lady–Scottish classic
The Fisherman’s Lady
by George MacDonald
edited by Michael Phillips
First published in 1875, entitled Malcolm, with a sequel arriving in 1877, The Fisherman’s Lady is a challenging read and a classical romance by a prolific writer of many genres. C.S. Lewis claimed MacDonald as his favorite writer saying, “I never wrote a book in which I did not quote George MacDonald.” The language is, of course, of an older age and reflects MacDonald’s background: Scottish minister, and author of fiction and nonfiction, including poetry. Contemporaries include Lewis Carroll, G.K. Chesterton, Charles Dickens, and Mark Twain.
Much of the dialogue in The Fisherman’s Lady is written with a Scottish brogue adding to the difficulty for the modern reader. Initially, I purchased a Kindle version that included both Malcolm and The Marquis of Lossie. Next, I located a printed version of The Fisherman’s Lady edited by Michael Phillips. He simplified the original by omitting some of the passages, but he also left some of the Scottish dialect for an authentic flavor.
Some readers categorize this novel as having a “gothic style.” It does contain some gothic elements from that Victorian period—a castle; dark, locked rooms; potential hauntings; crumbling stairways; the past affecting the present; twisted family ties; missing people; unusual sounds; and dreams.
The plot starts with sudden impact as it focuses on a corpse. Then, it proceeds slowly as characters are introduced. There are a lot of important figures in the book, and the editor lists them and a note about most of them, along with an area map. The story gains momentum and interest for the reader with lots of hooks leading into the following chapters. The protagonist is Malcolm, a fisherman who lives with his adopted father Duncan, an elderly, blind piper. Malcolm is a happy young man, honest, and a hard worker. He is devoted to the man who raised him whose only fault appears to be a quick temper over an old feud with another family. On the other side of the social strata is the Marquis of Lossie and his daughter, the beautiful Lady Florimel (Flory). Questions hang throughout the book concerning Malcolm’s parentage and that of the “Mad Lair,” a hunchbacked dwarf who has been badly mistreated by his mother.
Malcolm and Flory become friends, but they do not develop a romantic relationship because they both realize that social boundaries make any such bond between them unrealistic. Malcolm, however, would do anything for Flory, desiring to serve her long-term.
There are a few really evil women in this book. The way the upper class treats servants, laborers, the poor, and the disabled is upsetting, but a reflection of the times.
I enjoyed most of the book as far as it went, but I was disappointed in the sudden cut-off of the tale with no satisfactory conclusion for the characters. Most modern tales with sequels tie up the main threads in the first book but provide a motivation to encourage the reader to continue on to find out what happens to the characters in the next stage of their lives. This book contains a major event and then just ends with little attention to the aftershocks. The editor does include a brief paragraph to assure the reader on certain key points, but that statement was not part of the original text.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Historical Romance, Classic
Notes: 1. The first part of a two part set of books about Malcolm.
2. Includes Christian themes and shows characters trying to come to grips with their faith.
3. Clean
4. Includes preface by the editor and three appendices providing historical notes.
5. I have not yet decided if I will read the sequel, The Marquis of Lossie, or not.
Publication: Original in 1875—Henry S. King Publishers in Great Britain, and George Routledge & Sons in New York, and J.B. Lippincott in Philadelphia
This version edited by Michael Phillips in 1982—Bethany House Publishers
Memorable Lines:
Whatever may have been the projected attitude of the marquis, the moment he stood on the piper’s floor, the gentleman in him got the upper hand and his behavior to the old man was not only polite but respectful. At no period in the last twenty years had he been so nigh the kingdom of heaven as he was now when making his peace with the blind piper.
But Lady Florine had never studied anything yet, had never even perceived that anything wanted studying—that is, demanded to be understood. What appeared to her most odd, most inconsistent, was his delight in what she regarded only as the menial and dirty occupation of cleaning lamps and candlesticks; the poetic side of it, rendered tenfold poetic by his blindness, she never saw.
“No, no; never run from a lie. And never say, neither that you didn’t do the things except it be laid straight to your face. Let a lie lay in the dirt. If you pick it up, the dirt’ll stick to you, even if you fling the lie over the dike at the end of the world. No, no! Let a lie lay as you would the devil’s tail!”
Death by Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins–complex plot and lots of action
Death by Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins
By Sarah Graves
Jake and Ellie own the bakery and coffee shop the Chocolate Moose. They are great friends and would do anything for each other; and in Death by Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins, they get into some extreme situations that require them to take their faithfulness to the limit.
The pair is known in the Maine port town as amateur sleuths, and their husbands tolerate their sometimes dangerous investigations. Jake is the main character, so we see this story from her point of view. We also learn a lot about her multigenerational family of nine all living under the same roof.
The mystery part of this book ignites when the duo is hired to provide treats for an event at the old Stone House. The owners are a handsome reality star and his disgruntled wife. Be prepared for multiple murders, fires, and kidnappings. There is a lot of dangerous action in this cozy mystery, but it is fascinating to follow Jake and Ellie as they track down criminals. There are a number of suspects; the “wicked web” expands as the plot proceeds adding on miscreants and motives that are quite unexpected. There are a number of dogs, of various breeds, who play a role in the story. Jake owns two and gathers a third one, a small, white, fluffy dog, into her fold. This little dog’s involvement proves crucial.
I enjoyed Death by Chocolate Pumpkin Muffins. Very little of the story occurs in the bakery as tourist season is over, but Jake and Ellie do have to do some baking that ties directly into the mystery. The port setting in this series is always a good backdrop for a mystery, and with each book in the series, I learn a little more about Maine and living near the ocean.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Mystery
Notes: 1. #8 in the Death by Chocolate Mystery Series, but could be read as a standalone. As with most lengthy series, if you don’t start at the beginning you will miss some character background and development.
2. Some swearing.
Publication: April 28, 2025—Kensington
Memorable Lines:
“I love it,” he said, and I could see in his face that he really did. Downeast Maine takes some people that way, the whole land-sky-and-sea thing waking the sense of wonder that—much to their surprise, sometimes—has always been in their hearts.
A sparkling kitchen is at the heart of every good day, Bella always said. Of course she also thought it was at the heart of eternal salvation, world peace, reversing climate change, and the solution to the famed three-body problem in mathematics.
Good old Eastport, where keeping an eye out has developed into an art form of which gossip is the performance aspect.
Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave–mystery with a lot of humor
Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave
by Elle Cosimano
Having read the first book in this series, I was somewhat prepared for this one, but I had clearly missed a lot of character interaction between the first and the fifth. The main characters are still there: Finlay, a struggling single mom/author, and Vero, the family nanny and Finlay’s friend. Finlay does not get much writing done in this mystery as she is too wrapped up in trying to discover a murderer and prove it was not her philandering ex-husband. Along the way she uncovers other crimes and gets herself and Vero in trouble with law enforcement, including her boyfriend Nick, a detective.
There is a lot of humor that keeps this cozy mystery from being too dark. Finlay takes in her neighbor, Mrs. Haggerty, well known as a busybody, when she lost power and water. Adapting to sharing accommodations causes lots of issues in the household. Finlay’s preschool children Delia, suspended for taking care of a bully when the teacher didn’t, and Zach, a two-year old in need of potty training, are present throughout the book. Cam is a teenager who finds himself on his own in life, but uses his excellent computer hacking skills to Finlay’s advantage and manages to pay himself through deductions to her Venmo account and some home cooked meals.
I spent the first part of the book reorienting myself to the characters and background. Things got complicated in the middle with lots of tangled threads. It was not my favorite part of the book. The end was fantastic with lots of action and surprises. If you like the Finlay Donovan series, I think you will enjoy this one. Finlay learns to trust her boyfriend Nick. She and Vero get bogged down in a web of lies and crime—theirs and that of other characters in the story. There is a lot to like about this book, but if you are new to the series, I don’t suggest you start with Finlay Donovan Digs Her Own Grave.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Mystery, Fiction, Humor
Notes: #5 in the Finlay Donovan series. This would be a good series to start at the beginning and read in sequence as there are so many continuing characters.
Publication: March 4, 2025—St. Martin’s Press
Memorable Lines:
I was sick of people talking about me and the kids as if Steven’s mistakes defined us. I didn’t want Delia to grow up as the cheater’s kid or the murderer’s kid.
I would never have recognized Mrs. Haggerty’s Mark V. The car’s body had been painted a garish shade of purple. Flecks of glitter sparkled in the finish, and the new chrome grille glistened in the sun. Eggplant Ecstasy had been hand-lettered across the hood in fancy looping script. The tires were brand new with wide, white walls, and a disco ball hung from the rearview mirror, spraying the interior of the car with rainbow-colored light.
“A boy named Cooper has been harassing Delia on the playground. She gave him six stitches and a couple of bruised ribs”….“And then I kicked him in the tentacles,” Delia said “just like Vero showed me.”
Blind Trust–suspenseful with Christian themes
Blind Trust
by Laura Scott
narrated by Emily Sutton-Smith
Eva Kendall is an accomplished dog trainer in Queens, NY. She is employed in a training facility where she works with Coco, a dog intended to be her future service dog when she loses her eyesight to a degenerative eye disease. She is accosted and Coco is dognapped, beginning a series of crimes as the dognapper wants his “package” back. This attack is how Eva meets Finn Gallagher and his K-9 partner Abernathy. Finn has a reputation as a charmer who dates a girl twice and moves on before anyone can develop feelings. Things are different when he encounters Eva. They both have issues to work through if they are going to have a relationship—Eva, her disability, and Finn, abandonment by his mother.
There are many complications in the plot and the mastermind behind the criminal network is not obvious. My favorite character is Mikey, Eva’s sweet, three-year-old nephew whose mother passed away only two weeks prior. The dog Abernathy (Ab to Mikey) is the perfect blend of comfort to Mikey and protectiveness and obedience in his role as Finn’s K-9 partner. Although Eva, to her embarrassment, can not provide visual descriptions of her attackers, her other senses are heightened. She can describe their voices and the odors she associates with them, valuable clues to their identities.
In this novel of faith, romance, action, and suspense, Finn is a man of faith and models prayer for Eva and Mikey. Eva recovers her dependence on God, despite her impending blindness, and begins to pray on her own.
Emily Sutton-Smith’s narration is very good with all of the voices. She brings the characters to life, especially little Mikey.
I received a complimentary copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. Opinions expressed in this review are completely my own.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Christian, Fiction
Notes: This book is part of the True Blue K-9 Unit, but I read it as a stand-alone with no problems.
Publication: June 23, 2026—Harlequin Audio
The Lion Women of Tehran–power of friendship
The Lion Women of Tehran
By Marjan Kamali
No one can summarize the fascinating story told in The Lion Women of Tehran better than Marjan Kamali who says in her Author’s Note: “I follow the friendship between two girls who come from very different families and stations in life but who forge an indestructible bond when they are seven. Together they share the joys of childhood, the ups and downs of adolescence, the fractures of betrayal when they are young women, and the relief of redemption as their fate takes them across oceans and borders. All along, one of them, Homa, fights tirelessly for Iranian women to be free.”
The Lion Women of Tehran tells the story of multiple regime changes in Iran along with the hope for a better life and the disappointment when each new ruling class results in more hardship for the citizens than the one before. The novel’s setting is a powerful backdrop to this tale of the repression of women. Minor, even accidental, infractions such as a hair that escapes a hijab could result in imprisonment and torture. Men were not immune to jailing by the security police, either, with political prisoners receiving long, harsh jail sentences.
Ellie and Homa meet as children and despite difficulties over the years, they remain friends. These two characters capture the interest of the reader immediately and hold it as the novelist spins out a tale with many twists and turns. A chapter will end with a poignant line that lets you know that something important will happen in the next chapter or with a hook that grabs and won’t let go. I read this page turner quickly because I had to keep reading in hopes of discovering resolution to the various problems. The main final action occurs in 1982, but the author jumps ahead in time to 2022 to a concluding chapter and an epilogue. That technique seems rather abrupt, but it answers many questions satisfactorily without drawing the novel out needlessly with details that would detract from the main themes of the book—friendships that last and the strength of women in the face of adversity.
The chapters are well labeled to show whether the point of view is Homa’s or Ellie’s. Perhaps more importantly, the year and sometimes the month are noted. This notation is significant because there are gaps in the timeline and events are not always sequential in the storytelling.
The Lion Women of Tehran is a powerful work of fiction that deserves a top place in literary discussions. The prose is well-written and the plot is well-crafted. Marjan Kamali brings Iranian culture to life and presents an Iran that is not shared in news reports.
Rating: 5/5
Category: Historical Fiction
Publication: July 2, 2024—Gallery Books
Memorable Lines:
In the middle of the schoolyard with everyone watching, with the lunch break ticking away and stomachs grumbling, with the leaves on the ground fragile and breakable beneath our feet, my old friend wrapped her arms around me. She hugged me as though seven years had not passed…it was she Homa. The girl who was always her full self without apology, without explanation, without shame.
I walk in a city now littered with burning cars and trash cans ablaze, a city boiling in fury, a country desperate for change and freedom. My heart is heavy. I am once again cloaked in grief. As I walk, the voice in my head whispers again. And I cannot help but be chilled from head to toe: If the revolution succeeds, what if what follows is worse?
We are tired. Tired of the many ways we are continually told to shut up and obey. Tired of being worried about constant arrest because a strand or two of our hair might peek out. Because a patch of our skin might show. Tired above all—above all in God’s almighty planet—of being bombed. Night after night after night.
The Alchemist: A Modern Classic Fable of Spiritual Healing, Self-Discovery, and the Power of Dreams
The Alchemist
by Paulo Coelho
illustrated by James Noel Smith
translated by Alan R. Clarke
In this fictional account of an Andalusian shepherd, you will find a hodgepodge of philosophy, spirituality, and a variety of religions. Both the writer and the main character Santiago have their childhood roots in Catholicism, but both add in a blend of mysticism, Islamic beliefs, magic, and omens cloaked in a veil of wisdom. The Alchemist is the kind of book that readers will love or hate depending on their backgrounds and what they are searching for—in life and in a good book. The story is an adventure as Santiago goes on a pilgrimage of sorts, trying to live out his Personal Legend. In the process, he learns about the Language of the World, which all things, animate and inanimate, speak, and the Soul of the World in which everyone is a part of everyone else. The goal of his Personal Legend, treasure at the Egyptian pyramids, introduces him to a wise man who calls himself a king, a gypsy, a crystal glassware dealer, caravan operators, thieves, an English seeker of wisdom, and an actual alchemist. He learns first-hand about the desert, oases, love, and tribal warfare.
The Alchemist is fairly short (175 pages) and mildly interesting, but well-written. I don’t consider it a “treasure” or “masterpiece” as some readers describe it. The main attraction of the book, for me, is the beautiful artwork. From tiny sketches to a few full-color, two-page spreads, the art echoes the text with atmosphere that draws me in, keeps my attention, and enhances my enjoyment of the book.
Rating: 4/5
Category: Philosophy, Fiction, Spirituality, Self-Help
Publication: 1988—first published in Portuguese
1993—Harper One (translated to English)
Memorable Lines:
He was sure that it made no difference to her on which day he appeared: for her, every day was the same, and when each day is the same as the next, it’s because people fail to recognize the good things that happened in their lives every day that the sun rises.
“I’m like everyone else—I see the world in terms of what I would like to see happen, not what actually does.”
“When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realize his dream.”
education pathways 