Elixir by Hilary Duff

I'll admit from the start that I've always been a fan of Hilary Duff. My nieces, when they were younger, really enjoyed the Lizzie Maguire series on TV, and I enjoyed watching it with them. I liked that Hilary didn't seem to go the party-girl route that many other celebs go.

I was home sick from work one day, watching Ellen on TV, and Hilary was on the show. She was discussing her recent marriage, and I assumed a new movie. I was surprised to hear that she was there to promote her book. I'll admit that I thought "great, another artist who thinks they can jump from one genre to another". I've picked up books by other famous actresses to find that they were absolute crap. However, I suppose they weren't fiction... They were autobiographies.

Anyway, I was browsing e-books on the library website last week and saw that they had a copy of Hilary's book, Elixir. I put my name down on the waiting list for the audio book. I got the email on Thursday saying it was in, and uploaded (downloaded?) it to my iPod.

Friday morning, I started listening to Elixir on my way to the bus to head to the gym. Normally, it takes me a bit to get into a book, especially an audio book. (Well, to be honest, this is only my third audio book.) By the time I got to the gym, I didn't want to turn off my iPod! I checked, and there was only 6 minutes left in that chapter, so I actually left it on while I got ready for spin class.

By the end of the first chapter, I was already interested in the main character, Clea, and her best friend. I found myself listening to this book whenever I could - doing dishes, cleaning the house, and then while running a tempo run today at lunch. I was actually avoiding seeing people I knew on the ferry and bus so that I didn't have to turn it off to talk to them.

The book is about a teenage girl, Clea, who was raised in a prominent family. She is a photojournalist who travels to photo shoots around the world (with her mother's written permission since she's a minor) under a 'secret' identity. There's a lot of extra cheesy details in here that you could pick apart, but why bother?

She has vivid dreams about a handsome man, Sage, and then she meets him in Brazil. Together, along with her parent's hired companion, Ben, who is also in love with Clea, the three of them set out to track down what happened to her father when he disappeared while doing humanitarian work.

I had five minutes left of my tempo run when my iPod said "this concludes the audio book". Gah. It, of course, ended without a conclusion, leaving room for (I'd imagine) many more books in the series. I will be waiting for the next book in this series to see what happens to Clea, Sage, and Ben.

If you like teen girl books, which I do, you will likely enjoy this one.