Review: Elixir by Ted Galdi

Genre: Thriller, Mystery

Available: August 5, 2014

Pages: 245

Source: The author sent me this book in exchange for an honest review.
Synopsis: Meet 14-year-old Sean Malone. He has an IQ above 200, a full-ride scholarship to one of the country’s top universities, and more than one million dollars from his winning streak on Jeopardy. However, Sean wishes he could just be normal.

But his life is anything but normal. The US government manipulates him, using him as a codebreaker in pursuit of a drug lord and killing innocent people along the way.

For reasons related to his personal security, Sean finds himself in Rome, building a new life under a new name, abandoning academics, and hiding his genius from everyone. When he’s 18 he falls in love. The thrills begin again when he learns that his girlfriend is critically ill and it’s up to him to use his intellect to find a cure, a battle pitting him against a multi-billion-dollar pharmaceutical company and the demons of his past.

 Elixir is a story about identity, secrets, and above all, love.

Review:

I would first like to start out saying that this author does have a book giveaway going on for this book on Goodreads. You can enter here: https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/111428-elixir. He will be giving away 20 signed books to the winners.

At first I had a hard time with this book because of some grammatical issues but beyond that I had a problem with Sean and how he conversed with others. Sean would continuously use 'dude', 'yo', 'sup', and many other forms of slang, while talking to people this really bothered me for some reason. First it got very tiring reading the same words over and over when he talked with another, secondly I understand the author was trying to portray a teenage kid that wanted to be like all the rest, but to talk in slang all the time? The first half of the book is a bit slow, but the author does real well showing Sean's past instead of telling the reader about it.

During the second half of the book when Sean is 18 it gets better. First the dialogue is different he actually seems to act his age. It got a bit more interesting to read this half. Though Sean and his girlfriends relationship felt flat to me. The only other problem that I had with this book was the believable aspects in the novel. For instance it says he read a 43 page document in a minute and a half. This was also a document that wouldn't be easy to read since it dealt with medicine and dealing with the Ebola virus. It just doesn't sound believable. Just because you are the smartest person in the world doesn't mean you speed read as fast as lets say Flash the super hero would. I know this is a work of fiction but I would like some of it to be some what believable.

I did like the second half of the book it did take me on a thrill and was full of action. Very exciting the second half definitely did save the first part of the book. That is why it was hard for me to rate this novel. For the beginning of the book I wanted to rate it a 1 or 2 stars but the second part really saved it and I wanted to rate it a 3. On good reads I gave it a two. Since I could only give solid star ratings on here though I would give it a 2.75 or a 2.5 stars. I definitely think Ted Galdi will come out with great stories and hope to see more of his work in the future.

If you would like to know more about the story and the author please go here: http://www.elixirthebook.com/