Alchemy of Secrets (Part 2 - Plot, Character, Worldbuilding)
Hello, all. Welcome to the analysis portion of my Alchemy of Secrets review.
This part will dissect the plot, characters, and worldbuilding. If you are looking for a general overview of the book, please see Part 1. The analysis of the prose, structure, and the interlude chapters will come next week, along with a conclusion for this series.
Let’s dive in.
STATS
Title: Alchemy of Secrets
Series: N/A, though a sequel is in the works
Author(s): Stephanie Garber
Genre: Adult Fantasy (Urban)
First Printing: October 2025
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Rating: 5/10
SPOILER WARNING
Mild spoilers for Alchemy of Secrets will be included throughout this review, through I will keep the first paragraph of each section as spoiler-free as possible. Heavy spoilers will be confined to clearly labelled sections.
PLOT
A Decent Backbone
As stated last week, the plot of Alchemy of Secrets is a straightforward MacGuffin hunt. Holland has a clear time limit to find the Alchemical Heart, and she has to string together clues to track it down, bouncing between untrustworthy allies if possible.
I don't have much to say about this aspect of the story. It lends itself well to a fast-paced thriller. It’s simple and linear. Garber could have done a lot with this.
Keeping Us Guessing
Holland spends this book pinballing between potential allies, second-guessing every allegiance as new information is laid bare. This is the strongest element of the narrative by far. Because it’s never clear which of these people Holland can (or should) trust, it never truly feels like she’s safe, so tension continues to rise even when she’s out of whatever danger is posed by her alternatives.
What makes this work so well is that the story still works no matter which (if any) of these people is really the Good Guy (so to speak). Additionally, at no point does Holland choosing someone who might be the Bad Guy feel like an unnatural decision.
The “mysterious stranger” mentioned in the premise is a man named Gabe. Holland initally trusts him because he convinces her that her sister sent him and because the alternative was to get caught by the police. He also accurately points out how shady or ineffective everyone else Holland might trust is.
Holland later trusts one of Gabe’s rivals in the hunt of the Heart. She does this after he provides her with sanctuary and provides clarity on other supernatural things she’d encountered.
Holland trusts the Professor because of their personally history, plus the fact that, at worst, the Professor is the least of all evils.
One could argue that Holland stumbles from misplaced trust to misplaced trust because circumstances force her, but that's the point - circumstances force her. Holland isn’t putting faith in the wrong people because the plot needs her to be an idiot. She does so because her other option is death, and she flexes as much agency as she can despite being forced into these alliances. Even when she made decisions that I felt were the wrong ones, those decisions made perfect sense, and the story wouldn’t have collapsed regardless of whether those decisions were right or wrong.
Fueled by Contrivance
Garber frames this story as a mystery, with Holland having a resolve a chain of clues to find the heart. Unfortunately, she kicks the legs out from under this with layers of contrivance.
Plot Coupon Shoe
Prior to the 40% mark, Holland and Gabe need to flee her house. In their escape, Holland grabs a random pair of shoes from her sister January’s room so that she doesn't have to run out barefoot.
These shoes were not established as being special. They were not established as the only shoes in the room. Holland makes no deliberate choice for these shoes over any other pair. All we get is:
Holland threw on January’s backpack first, imagining it still held answers to secrets. Then she shoved her feet into a pair of January’s sneakers. The right one hurt, as if there was something wedged underneath the sole.
Just “a” pair of shoes … in which we immediately discovers a plot coupon. Thst object wedged in the shoe is a key that enables Holland to progress past the story’s 55% mark. Without this key, she would have failed.
Friends Are Benefits
Twice in this book, Holland is able to either escape a dangerous situation or gain access to a location because she just happened to have a friend in a relevant position of power. Said friend contributes nothing after the scene in question. Both were established only in passing in a single scene earlier in the book, where Garber info-dumped about their relationship with Holland before not developing that relationship.
Without both of these friends, Holland would have failed to get the heart and would haved died at the end of the book.
The Chessmaster
The clues that Holland is following to the Heart were prepared by her father before his death. Much like with Asher guiding Violet from beyond the grave in Onyx Storm, we are meant to see this is some master plan being fulfilled.
Also like Asher guiding Violet in Onyx Storm, this is really dumb.
The fact Holland’s father knew she would find her way into this mess is fine. It’s implied within the text that he had the ability to see the future. He could potentially have mapped out all these events.
The problem is that Holland is only in this mess because her father set this up in the first place. The only reason anyone has to think she could acquire the Heart is that her father went out if his way to make it look like she would know where it was. So if he did have the power to see the future and plan all this out in advance, then absolutely everything in this premise is contrived. Either he needlessly put Holland in danger just so he could be the one to arrange her escape, or else his vision of the future is just limited enough to give her a roadmap while preserving narrative drama. It’s a contrivance no matter how open slices it.
Speaking of things that never needed to happen …
Tainted Heart (Heavy Spoilers)
There are a couple points in this story where Holland thinks she’s found the Heart, only to discover that it’s just another clue.
The second time this happened, I began to wonder if Holland had the Heart already. That is to say, I thought that maybe, via some magical means, Holland's own heart was actually the Heart, or maybe Holland as a whole was the Heart. Maybe this all would lead to Holland experiencing character development and having some revelation that would reveal this to her.
If this had been the case, that could have been a satisfying way to end the story. A bit cliché, perhaps, but that wouldn't make it inherently bad. It would have come down to earning that moment of revelation.
What Garber actually did is far worse and far dumber.
Holland had the Heart the whole time. It delivered itself to her in the first 20% of the book, described as a package from the Professor, acting on a wish made by her father. She doesn’t uncover this via any moment of character growth that leads to revelation. She just jumps to a conclusion and is right.
In short … this entire book was completely pointless.
If Holland had indeed undergone some metamorphosis to earn this revelation, or if she had completed some journey to make her worthy of the Heart, this could still have worked. That’s simply not what we got. Holland just solves the mystery with a nonsensical guess that happens to be correct.
To make matters worse, the Heart wants her to figure out what it is. That’s how it delivered itself to her: it’s capable of transporting itself by generating a human avatar to carry itself around. It’s pleased when she figures everything out. If it wanted to be found so badly, why not announce itself up front, especially when Holland apparently didn’t need to prove herself?
Oh, and building in what was said above, the reason the Heart is doing this is because her father, who saw the future, foresaw that she’d need the Heart to save her life, but somehow couldn't forsee that the only reason she’d need the Heart to save her life was that he arranged for her to find the heart, so he … wished for the Heart to deliver itself to her, thereby creating the very danger he wishes to save her from.
The Least Interesting Answers (Heavy Spoilers)
As in Caraval, Garber chose to pay off core mysteries with the most boring answers possible. Unlike with that book, I can’t call them the safest answers.
One of these answers is the reveal of the Heart. This not only wasn't safe - it actively makes the story worse.
The other issue, though, pertains to the Devil.
See, a big deal is made at the beginning of this book about the Devil hanging around in Los Angeles and making supernaturnal deals. People who can’t live up to their end of the bargain are murdered. Holland’s established motivation at the start of the story is to prove to the world that her parents were the victims of such a deal so that she can clear their names of their supposed murder-suicide.
There was a point, right before the plot started to go downhill, when I started to wonder if the Devil was really supposed to be the Devil. Up until that point, Holland had just to see anything irrefutably supernatural. Everything could be explained by creppy vibes, shady people with influence, and a lot of smoke and mirrors to make people think occult things were happening. This sort of bait-and-switch normally irritates me, but in this case, I found myself intrigued. How would all the strange occurrences be explained if none of it was truly supernatural?
Except … no. The Devil really is the Devil.
Actually, the Devil is two people.
Actually, the Devil used to be two people, but now it is one.
And he’s not really Satan or Lucifer or whatever Biblical name one chooses to use. He’s just a guy cashing in on the Devil's reputation to make connections and gain influence in Hollywood … except he really does have supernatural powers, so the only functional difference between him and the literal Devil is the implications for the health of the deal-maker’s soul, but since souls are not a factor in this story, that doesn't matter anyway.
At this point, Garber might as well have not brought the Devil into this at all. If she had just included some knock-off of Doctor Facilier or Mr. Gold, and made it clear that this was all this man was from the beginning, that would have been fine. Instead, she set an expectation, then led the audience on a convoluted path that ended in, “It’s just some guy.”
Half-Hearted (Heavy Spoilers)
From the start of the narrative, and across the first third of the book, Garber really hammers in Holland’s motivation. It is very important that the audience understands that Holland’s parents are dead and that she is hellbent on proving that the Devil is going around killing people in LA.
Except … they never go anywhere.
I don’t want to say that these motivations are forgotten as the hunt for the Heart heats up. They aren’t. They keep getting mentioned. However, they aren’t developed. Holland’s desires don’t evolve. She doesn’t find any resolution. If Garber weren’t beating us over the head with things we already knew (more on that next week), I really think they’d have dropped out of the narrative entirely.
At the end of the book, we’re Told that Harper finds closure when she finds and uses the magic of the Heart - but has she? What about her journey actually done to affect her emotional connection to the memory of her parents? How has it brought her any closer to exposing or even hindering the Devil? At best, one could argue that not using magic to raise her parents from the dead (an idea that was floated) was meant to answer that first question, but Holland wasn’t delving into the magical world for that purpose. It would be like me acting like I’ve grown as a person if I turned down the magical ability to talk to capybaras. There’s no virtue in the refusal of something that wasn’t desired in the first place.
All this is to say that the elements of the plot tied most closely to Holland’s character are nothing but filler. Maybe Garber plans to make use of them in the sequel. if that’s the case, though, she was way too heavy-handed with them in this book.
Style over Substance Twist (Heavy Spoilers)
I almost forgot to mention this one - and that should tell you just how irrelevant to the story it was.
As mentioned in the Content Warning, Holland suffers several episodes throughout the book wherein her nose starts bleeding and she starts hallucinating. Usually, these hallucinations see Gabe or Adam (depending on who she’s with at the moment) switching places, coupled with images of blood and death. There are also a few moments where time skips, either accelerating in ways that can’t be explained by the prose or else causing people around Holland to start bleeding while they repeat lines of dialogue.
The explanation for this is … unsatisfying.
It turns out that all of the events of this book (except for the interlude chapters) are happening inside of a 48 hour time loop. Holland’s hallucinations are half-remembered pieces of past loops. Said loop was implemented by the Heart to preserve her life until she found an iteration where she didn’t die.
This isn’t a bad explanation. It also fits the worldbuilding. It’s established by the Heart that the rules of magical balance in this setting make it impossible to rewind time without erasing memories, so the fact Harper isn’t allowed to benefit from past experiences doesn’t feel contrived in the same way as the unexplained limits of her father’s future sight does.
Rather, my issue with this is that it doesn’t add anything to the story. It exists purely for Garber to dial up the tension by flashing random sequences of disturbing imagery at us. The only thing about the narrative that is actually changed by this is that a character whom Holland thinks can read minds merely has the power to remember past iterations of the time loop, and since mind reading is already an established power by this point in the narrative, the narrative would ultimately be the same even if this character was reading her mind.
This twist made me flash back to “The Endless Eight” story from the Haruhi Suzumiya franchise. That time loop story also featured a cast of characters who couldn’t remember the previous loops, save one character who couldn’t contribute to getting the others out of the loop, and escape from the loop amounted to a wild leap in logic. However, at least there, the time loop was the point of the story. It was a reminder that Haruhi may be an omnipotent sociopath, but she’s also a lonely high school girl who wants to share every possible experience with her friends.
Here, the time loop is just here to justify lazily toying with the audience’s investment. Even the 8 episodes of the anime adaptation of “The Endless Eight” had more thought and effort put into them than this.
CHARACTERS
I don’t have a lot to say about the characters. They don’t drive this narrative. There’s good and bad here, but in and of itself, I don’t think any of it affects the overall quality of the narrative.
Holland
We’re already covered the issue of Holland’s half-heartedly handled character motivations. Outside of that, though, I don’t have an issue with how Holland is written. She’s a protagonist who’s easy enough to get invested in. What’s more, because Garber does a good job at keeping the audience guessing as to what Holland’s best option really is, none of the poor decisions she makes actually reflect badly on her.
Accessories
Early in the book, we are introduced to Holland’s three friends.
Only one of them recurs in multiple scenes. He’s not really important to the story, but because his backstory as a child star on an in-world TV show gets woven into a widen tapestry of in-world entertainment that gets referenced through this book, he ends up being the only one of the three who feels like he was planned out as his own character from the beginning.
The other two, though, are accessories fit for The Empyrean. When I read their introductory scene, I remember being frustrated by just how much character lore Garber was Telling us rather than building their relationship with Holland organically. In hindsight, this is probably because they weren’t originally part of the story.
After this introductory scene, each of these two characters has exactly one scene where they aren’t background extras. In each case, Holland has a specific problem - escaping from one of the factions after the Heart in the first case, and getting into a secure studio in the second - that needs to be resolved by another character stepping in to help her. Each of these friends solves one of these problems and then vanished from relevance once more.
Both of these two appear to have been aftshadowed into the narrative. Garber needed an explanation for why Holland could trust random characters to help her in a story where she supposedly can’t trust anyone, and the answer she decided to go with was that they are all best friends who buy drinks for the Devil together. I suspect that those info-dump introductions were slapped in at the last minute to minimize the amount of changes Garber needed to make (which is about to get very important in a moment).
Romance
Garber takes a stab at adding romance elements to this book. It is very awkward.
Holland is surrounded by hot men. Both Gabe and one of Gabe’s rivals for the heart are repeatedly described as very attractive people. For that matter, her friend who is a form child star also seems to be very attractive and to have a vested emotional interest in her well-being. Even the Devil is framed as attractive, and not just in the sense of evil being seductive.
Outside of this harem setup, though, there’s no actual romance here. There isn’t even sexual tension. There are moments where Holland considers sex with them, but it neve reaches the level of actually motivating here.
Then there are the kisses. Gabe kisses her once in a bid to calm her down and keep her focused, while the rival does it in a, “Public displays of affection make people uncomfortable,” moment that seems right out of The Winter Soldier. There is no chemistry behind either of those kisses. Holland on reflects on them in passing. It’s about as romantic as being kissed by random strangers on a train.
WORLDBUILDING
I have less to say about the worldbuilding than I do about the characters.
Supernatural Yet Soft
Much like in Caraval, you don’t need to understand the magic system to actually follow this story. The magic actually doesn’t have a huge influence on the narrative outside of the fact that the MacGuffin hunt is for something magical. This is the way to do Soft Magic properly.
That being said, this book does have a …
Powers System
In this world, people can inherit magical abilities through their family or have abilities bestowed upon them through the Heart or other sources of magic. Much like Signets or the abilities in Blood Heir, these are basically just superpowers. While I’m developing a dislike for this type of magic system, and I do plan to write an Interlude in the future to break down my concerns, it doesn’t damage this narrative.
Retcons
While this is technically more of a plot issue, I wanted to discuss it here. I have a feeling the worldbuilding will break before the plot if Garber keeps doing this in the sequel.
At a couple points in this story, Garber aggressively retcons her own lore. I don’t mean that she reveals new insights or evolves Holland’s (and our) understanding of that lore. I mean she turns to the audience and says, “Yes, it worked this way before, but now I want it to work this way.” We already covered one example of this up above, while discussing the handling of the Devil. Another example of the handling of Holland’s aunt and uncle, characters from her backstory who are later revealed to not be her blood relatives in a moment that was meant to be a big character revelation. There may have been other examples, too, but those were the two that jumped out at me.
The issue with these retcons is less the changes themselves and more what they represent. These don’t affect the trajectory of the narrative. If Garber had simply gone with the both-retcon versions of the lore, the story would play exactly the same. These retcons come across as if Garber wrote this book in a single draft, changed her mind midway through about what she wanted the lore to be, and then did the retcon on the spot rather than making continuity edits.
DAZED AND CONFUSED
Next Tuesday, we’ll wrap up the review of Alchemy of Secrets with Part 3, analyzing the prose and formatting of the book.
While I was excited to see what Garber would do with her first book for adult audiences, I’m not sure an adult book is what we got. There are multiple aspects of this book that read like a YA novel. That would be fine in YA, but this story is not a YA story, so otherwise harmless traits end up undermining the narrative.
It’s coming your way on November 11th. Thank you all for stopping by this week. Please remember to share and subscribe if you liked what you read here. Take care, everyone, and have a good week.
