Elixir: AKA Hilary Duff’s Self Insert YA Novel No One Remembers
In October of 2010, novel called Elixir dropped and made a lackluster splash. Despite some good reviews and making Number 10 on the NYT Children’s Books (for a week), it never reached any fervor. Not like how some books do. Despite having Duff’s name across the cover and MTV suggesting it be picked up for a movie adaptation, it was easily forgotten.
(Credit to James Tullos of YT. Without him, I wouldn’t have heard of this book. His video is here.)
Clea Raymond is a talented photojournalist and the daughter of high-profile parents. Usually she’s in total control of her camera, but after Clea’s father disappears while on a humanitarian mission, eerie, shadowy images of a strange and handsome young man begin to appear in Clea’s photos—a man she has never seen in her life. When Clea suddenly encounters this man in person she is stunned—and feels an immediate and powerful connection. As they grow closer, they are drawn deep into the mystery behind her father’s disappearance and discover the centuries-old truth behind their intense bond. Torn by a dangerous love triangle and haunted by a powerful secret that holds their fate, together they race against time to unravel their past in order to save their future—and their lives.
It was co-written with Elise Allen. It’s unclear how much was split between the two authors.
Sin 1: Clea is very obviously Duff’s self insert.
A bit of background on Hilary Duff! She began acting in 1993 and got very famous in the early 2000′s for Disney’s Lizzie McGuire. She was a teen idol from about 2001-2005 and has appeared in various movies since leaving Disney, the most recent being The Haunting of Sharon Tate (2019). She also had several well received musical albums, the last dropping in 2015.
Now a little information on Clea.
She is the daughter of an American senator and a heart surgeon but for some reason gets very recognized everywhere she goes. It’s very shown through the novel that she’s Kardashian level famous and can’t go anywhere in the world without being recognized.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a clipped British accent. “You looked terribly upset when you left the dance floor.” “I did?” I had a disturbing image of a juicy Page Six headline: Senator Victoria Weston’s Daughter Loses It in Paris Nightclub. “Did people notice?”
I am a Weston, and the main thing it’s meant is a bunch of photographers chasing me from the minute I was born, writing about how I might affect Mom’s career, or whether I’d follow in the Weston footsteps one day to change the world. My family name meant that two months into seventh grade, a photo spread appeared in People magazine: “Clea Raymond’s Awkward Tween Years!” It was filled with hideous pictures of me from camp the summer before—pictures I had no idea were even being snapped. There was one of me with sleep-knotted hair and thick glasses, another of me picking out a wedgie. There’s nothing better for a twelve-year-old’s blooming self-esteem than images like that papered all over her school. They gave me a stomachache that lasted until high school.
Yeah uh.... Senator and Heart Surgeon’s daughter...
American Senators very rarely travel outside of the US. They’re not diplomats. And Heart Surgeons don’t either, unless its for a conference or for research purposes. As usual, correct me if I’m wrong! But neither job lends itself to a life of glamour. They’re hard work and the rewards aren’t always the best.
Also, I’m pretty sure Senators are not allowed to use government money to send their kids on almost month long trips to Europe. There would be a lot of outraged citizens. And we never find out which party her mom belongs to, which I’m sure is on purpose but it’s an annoying detail to me.
And it’s not even that she gets recognized in America - Americans, name me one Senator’s child without looking it up, I dare you - but also worldwide.
Rayna pulled out her phone. “Honestly, I don’t know how you survive without Google Alerts on yourself. The paparazzi were out in full force for Carnival.”
As we maneuvered through the crowds, I noticed people looking at us. It was weird. Young, giggling fashionistas weren’t the type who usually recognized me, but today they did. Pairs and groups of Japanese girls did double takes as we passed them, their eyes going wide as they clutched one another’s arms and waved their hands in front of their mouths, whispering and giggling. Some even snapped pictures with their wildly decorated cell phones. “Ho-ly crap,” Ben said, and I followed his open mouthed stare upward to the giant screen on the side of the Q-Front Building. It was airing some gossipy entertainment show … featuring the pictures of Ben and me at Carnival. Right now the one of him staring at me while I shot pictures of the Samba Parade was up, and while I couldn’t read Japanese, it wasn’t hard to imagine what the swirly pink script accented with hearts and flowers implied.
An American Senator’s daughter in Japan or Brazil would not be recognized. I refuse to believe that. Especially not during Carnival. The biggest holiday in the city, when every celebrity in Brazil is there, when everything is one big party and no one gives a shit about anything. As for Japan, I’m pretty sure that wouldn’t happen either. But feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
It’s even to the point that she can’t get a job as photographer for “legit” publications.
Finally the responses poured in … every single one a rejection. A hundred different versions of Thanks, but this is a serious publication. We don’t hire celebrity children for vanity projects.
If her parents actually were celebrities, this would make a lot more sense. But they’re not. If they were like, Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis, actors who have been in Hollywood for nearly 30 years, that would make more sense. But they’re not. They work jobs that don’t pay nearly as much as Duff and Allen are describing, and don’t have that level of fame. Unless Clea did something really scandalous (like say spend three weeks on holiday in Europe using government money), or her dad discovered a revolutionary, world changing medical treatment, or her mom exposed alien contact videos from the Pentagon, they wouldn’t have this much fame to the point that Clea can’t get a job because of her family name.
She still gets the jobs, but under a pseudonym. Because of course she does.
It’s because of these glaring discrepancies that I think Clea is Duff’s self insert, because she was at the peak of her fame around 17, the same age as Clea. If Clea had been a model or an actress, it would have been too obvious about the self insertion, but would have made more sense to the world obsessing over her. And if you had no idea who Hilary Duff was when reading this, then you might have just thought it was an attempt by the writer to live vicariously through the character. But the fact remains that things don’t quite add up in regards to Clea’s level of fame and her parents jobs and with Duff’s background, the most reasonable conclusion is that Clea is Duff’s self insert.
This is, of course, speculation. Moving on!
Sin 2: Clea is Not Like Other Girls, but it’s ok because her best friend is.
Clea has a major case of NLOG and her best friend Rayna is no exception. Rayna No Last Name has been Clea’s best friend literally since they were born. And if you only read the first book, you would think she was a shallow, boy obsessed, no depth to her, YA Best Friend.
But I read all three (reviews to come) and know that she has hidden depths. But without True (the final novel), you wouldn’t know that because without her POV, and only Clea’s she comes off as a ditzy best friend that doesn’t impact the plot at all.
Thanks to my parents, I’ve been lucky enough to see some of the greatest actors of our time perform onstage. Rayna engaging in the art of seduction beat all of them, hands down.
She came up for air with a smile that promised more, then leaned toward me and stage-whispered, “Pierre and I are soulmates.” I tried not to laugh. I would have if it was just a line, if she were just saying it to assure Pierre he wasn’t spending his drink money in vain. But I knew in this moment, Rayna absolutely meant it, as strongly as she had meant it when she’d said it about Alexei, Julien, Rick, Janko, Steve, and Avi … all of whom she had fallen head over heels with in the past three weeks.
Personally, I never answer the phone if I don’t recognize the number. Rayna doesn’t feel the same way; she sees an unknown caller as a doorway to a possible romance. “Hello?” she answered seductively.
What is with YA Best Friends never having any plot impact? They’re always there just to be sounding boards for the main character and a leg of the love triangle if they’re male.
Sin 3: Telling, not showing.
The entire first chapter is nothing but Info Dumping about Clea, her life, and how rich her family is. This is a common thing in a lot of YA books, but especially, how to put this... low brow ones?
Don’t get your panties in a twist, lemme explain.
Between 2008 and 2016 there was a massive YA boom thanks to Twilight and Hunger Games. Even before then, the genre had been slowly gaining traction in publishing thanks to Harry Potter. Twilight and Hunger Games then helped spawn two separate booms within the previously, somewhat niche, division of books.
2012 saw 1,312 Young Adult novels, many the first in their series and quite a few of which were Dystopian thanks to the release of the first Hunger Games movie which had sparked renewed interest in the genre.
2008 was the Urban Paranormal boom, thanks to to Twilight. When talking about Twilight Knock-Offs, it’s easy to assume the books in question came out between 2008 and 2012, because during this time publishers wanted to not only keep up with the trend, but try to reinvent it. How many ways can we sell the story of a supernatural being attending high school, an ordinary teen girl, a second Love Interest, and some large threat?
Because there was such a high demand for these books, preferably as part of a series, publishing houses weren’t always so concerned with quality. Quantity was most important. The more books, the more chances for a NYT chart topper. In 2010, just under 5,000 YA books came out. Between 2008 and 2012, the total comes out to around 13,000 books, with 2008 being the lowest year with only 197, and the highest being 2009 with 5,028. With a difference of 4,831 books between them and Twilight having sold a few million copies in the interim, is it any wonder than some books, especially the knock-offs, weren’t so great?
And with having a celebrity’s name attached to the book, is it any wonder that a publishing house might have rushed it into publication and given it very little editing? So when the reader is presented with an info dump about Clea, her family, Rayna, and how Clea is very famous, the blame lies somewhere between the publishing house, Duff, and Duff’s co-writer.
But the info-dumping and the telling not showing continues through out the whole novel, with Clea telling us how much she misses her dad, how smart he was, how much she loves running around Europe on the governments dime, etc... Take, for instance, this part about how Clea’s dad found out who Shakespeare’s Dark Lady and her connection to the Elixir.
Ben joined me and read over my shoulder as we scanned the file. There was a ton of material, but the gist of it was that while Dad was researching the Elixir of Life, he’d found an obscure reference book that tied the Elixir to Shakespeare. The book cited a lost play in Shakespeare’s canon: Love’s Labour’s Wonne. Only the title remained, and while many assumed from that title that the play was a sequel to Love’s Labour’s Lost, Dad’s reference book said it was actually a story about a pair of lovers brought together and then ripped apart because of the Elixir of Life. Furthermore, the book said the story was inspired by a lover of Shakespeare’s—the Dark Lady.
From there, Dad did more research. He wanted to know who the Dark Lady was, to see if she might have some connection to the Elixir. Dad pored over volumes of analysis on the subject, as well as the sonnets themselves. After exhaustive study, he wound up rejecting all the mainstream theories about the Dark Lady’s identity. He believed the Dark Lady was a woman named Magda Alessandri, whom many thought to be a sorceress. Dad wondered if her reputation as a sorceress came from an entanglement with the Elixir of Life, and he tried to find out more about her. He even managed to track down her living descendants, and had been visiting and interviewing them during his trips to various GloboReach outposts around the world.
There’s no dialogue and it’s two large chunks of no action, just Info Dumping and telling us, not showing us. An Info Dump opening can be fine, but doing it through the whole book will only annoy the reader.
(This isn’t particularly important but as a side note
Knowing there was a good chance we’d be away from the house for a while, I grabbed a duffel bag and tossed some clothes inside. I also threw in some makeup. There was no reason I had to look like a fugitive just because I’d be acting like one.
She only flies first class and doesn’t even try to disguise herself. There are no fugitive-esque activities here.)
Sin 4: Lack of tension building.
At no point in reading this is there true tension. Even during scenes where there should be tension is there. Clea is briefly kidnapped, attacked, and even shot, but there is never any tension to them. She’s Duff’s self insert and the main character, so you know she’ll be fine. There is also this...
“Your mom called this morning. Some big government figure is visiting from Israel, and your mom decided they’ll get the most accomplished over a giant impromptu Piri-catered lunch at the house.” Amazing. Only my mom could manage a last-minute luncheon for a group of dignitaries whose schedules had probably been etched in stone for months. It was the kind of unheard-of thing she had become famous for during her time in Washington. “So you mean … ,” I started. But Rayna finished for me, laughing as she said, “The Secret Service showed up at six this morning to go over the whole property with microscopes, and they’re not leaving until the party’s over. If there were dangerous people anywhere near the house, they’re either long gone or in federal custody.”
Rayna was right. The Secret Service was all over the house. They knew Ben and Rayna, but “Larry Steczynski” had to be properly vetted. If there was any doubt about the authenticity of his fake ID, it would now be put to the test. As Sage waited for the Secret Service to do their due diligence, I wondered how much our mission to find Dad would be set back by Sage taking a quick detour to federal prison. “He’s clear,” the lead agent finally said. Great, we could go in.
Mom’s party wasn’t huge, but the simple force of all the personalities made it feel like the room was filled with people. As was often the case, Mom was the only woman at the party. Her guests included seven top members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and a man I’m sure I should have recognized but didn’t, whom I imagined was the Israeli diplomat .... Everyone laughed harder, and Mom raised her shot glass in a toast to them all and downed her pálinka, the Hungarian brandy Piri had brought out for the occasion. Mom took a bow as everyone applauded, and collapsed dramatically into her seat. Then she saw me. “Clea!” she cried. “Come here!” I grinned and ran to her, and she wrapped me in a fierce hug. “I’ve missed you, baby!” She pulled away and spun me around to face the group, her hands on my shoulders. “Everyone, I’m sure you remember my incredibly accomplished daughter, Clea, who we’ll all be working for one day. Clea, you know the senators, and this is Imi Sanders, Israeli minister of foreign affairs.” “Pleased to meet you,” I said, shaking the minister’s hand. “The pleasure is mine, “ he replied.
I highly doubt an Israeli prime minister on 2010 would shake the hand of an American senator’s daughter while she is wearing, in her own words, “a little black sundress”. Nor would he be downing shots with said senator. And it only gets worse.
“This is Larry Steczynski! You can call him Sage. He’s my new boyfriend!” Rayna suddenly chirped, threading her arm through Sage’s and giving him a squeeze. To his credit, Sage looked only slightly surprised. “Really!” Mom said meaningfully. “Then we should talk.” She turned to the group and asked, “Gentlemen?” Without hesitation, all the senators and the Israeli minister agreed that the next topic of their agenda should clearly be a debate of Sage’s merits and pitfalls as a partner to Rayna. As Mom took Sage and Rayna’s hands and led them to the couch, two senators gladly moved aside to give them space. Sage shot me a look so plaintive I almost laughed out loud.
This should have been a moment of ultra high tension. They should have been freaking out about the Secret Service being at the house, at foreign dignitaries visiting and how hard it would be to get in and out like they wanted. There should have been moments of the SSA guy asking Sage questions about things like when his ID was issued, where he lived, what he did for a living, why he was with the underage Senator’s daughter. They could have patted him down, found something a little suspicious, like one of those little bottles of alcohol that they serve on planes and tested it.
A pitfall of this novel is that the writers don’t take advantage of the very open door of political tension they could have. In 2010, American-Israeli relations were Not Good. They would not be doing shots at a senator’s house. Because of this tension, Clea and the gang running in could have upset the delicate balance her mom was making. They could have had Clea’s mom excuse herself from a clearly tense lunch, scold Clea for interrupting such an important event that she had tried to contact her about, and told her to go get dressed in a formal but simple outfit, emphasizing that she is trying to make the Israeli ambassador comfortable so she needs to make sure she’s wearing a suit and that her shirt covers her chest and neck, and that her makeup is not very heavy.
And while Clea was in the lunch, showing the ambassador and other dignitaries that she is accomplished in her own right and that she is a credit to her parents and talking about the upcoming political happenings, we could cut to a Rayna POV where she is helping find things and using her knowledge of Grant and Clea to find the little hideyholes that Ben and Sage could not.
When Clea gets shot at the very end of the novel, she is shot in her thigh. Quick anatomy lesson: the femoral artery is in the thigh. If the femoral artery is pierced, you can bleed to death in as little as five minutes. The wound is described as “gushing blood” and while gun shot wounds do bleed excessively, there is no way to tell if an artery or organ has been struck until either an autopsy or a scan has been completed. But even if you don’t know this, there’s no tension to questioning if Clea will survive or if she will possibly be disabled. As both the self insert and the main character, she will be fine and there will be no consequences to her actions, even though, at this time, she, a United States Senator’s daughter, was just shot while in Japan. There will be no repercussions for that to either her mother’s career or her own personal freedom of movement in foreign countries even though this absolutely should have irrevocably damaged both. When your main character is SHOT, your reader should be terrified, not thinking “eh, she’ll be fine”.
Sin 5: Poor mythology building.
Clea’s Love Interest is Sage, the man from the photographs. Pretty quickly we find out that Sage is immortal because he drank like, a gallon of the Elixir of Life way back during Shakespeare times and now he’s immortal.
Except it’s not quite the Elixir of Life.
In mythology, the Elixir of Life is described as either stemming from the Philosopher’s Stone, being an alchemical creation, or a magic potion that requires very specific ingredients and preparation. This means that it is not a natural resource.
According to this, it actually just comes from a random hole in the ground somewhere in Probably Egypt which would fall more in line with it being the Fountain of Youth. Except the Fountain of Youth only restores ones youth and cures all illnesses. It’s not a one and done knock-a-shot-back immortality daiquiri.
One person they go to see about it is Magda Alessandri, Shakespeare’s Raven Lady, apparently named for her dark hair. (And in the far distance you’ll hear the rumble of dozens of Shakespearean scholars arguing about whether she just had black hair or was of African descent because believe it or not, there were Black people in England back then!) Magda is basically a walking skeleton because her mother was a powerful mystic who sealed her life force in a charm. So long as the charm is intact, Magda will live. But her mom forgot to give her eternal youth to go with it and now Magda is The Mummy. And she lives in a small apartment in a Japanese mall for some reason.
The fact that mystics or witches or magical people in general exist is never brought up again. The fact that reincarnation exists is only important because Clea and Ben can reincarnate but we have no idea if anyone else can. For comparison, in the novel Fallen by Lauren Kate, the mythology states that so long as one is baptized, you can reincarnate. The fact that the main character isn’t baptized becomes important. Clea and Ben never drank any of the elixir and there’s no real explanation about why they reincarnate. The “magic system” of this novel is just mythological spaghetti on a wall with no rhyme or reason.
(This isn’t magic system related but in the beginning of the novel when she’s trying to go to Rio, Clea makes a big deal about getting a notarized letter from her mom so she can travel overseas by herself and then it just never comes up again even when she’s flying to Japan.)
Sin 6: Clea is dumber than a box of rocks and is totally willing to jump into bed with Sage only A DAY after being convinced that he was going to murder her.
Of course the eye was blank. It belonged to Olivia, and she was dead. She was lying on her side, the back of her skull crushed in, and her mouth fixed open in a final scream of terror. Blood pooled all around her; the iris charm she wore was fixed to the floor in a cake of red. The whole canvas drowned in a sea of blood, and while Olivia’s body was the focus, it was only the centerpiece of an abattoir of carnage. Other bodies lay behind Olivia’s, men and women twisted in poses of horror, swords and daggers impaling them to the floor. Images from my nightmares flashed through my mind, and I winced away from them. I’d lived this scene. Oh my God, was I looking at a painting of my own death? .... Quickly I flipped through the other canvases: more of the same. Delia’s death pose was pristinely clean, with only a single gaping bullet hole between her eyes. Catherine’s was terrible; she writhed and screamed as a bonfire of flames engulfed her waiflike body, tied securely to a stake. The voices were coming closer. I had to get out of here. Then I noticed something on the wall. A line of nails. Four of them, each with a delicate iris-charm necklace hanging off it. And a fifth nail. Empty. Waiting. .... Somehow I managed to keep hold of my sanity for the next fifteen minutes. Sage finished making sandwiches, double-checked to make sure he had all Larry Steczynski’s necessary documents, and put together a small duffel bag of clothes. Every time he looked my way, I couldn’t help but feel that he knew exactly what I’d seen and done. He didn’t like it, and he’d find a way to make me pay.
And then, NOT EVEN A FULL DAY LATER, and after chatting a little with Rayna about how he’s too hot to be a serial killer, they bang in a car. But before she does that, she does this.
I loved Ben, that’s what I felt. It popped into my head, and I didn’t doubt it for a second. I loved Ben. Well that was settled then, wasn’t it?
Ten minutes later
I closed the distance between us and kissed him. I felt dizzy and hot and floaty, like every cliché … but it was true. I couldn’t feel my feet. I finally felt like I was where my soul belonged. .... Sage didn’t seem to mind. He reached down and moved his seat back to its maximum leg room, then held out his hand. I grabbed it and clambered over the center console, clumsily ducking and folding myself until I finally settled onto his lap, straddling his legs. It was the least coordinated act of seduction ever. .... He kissed me, sliding his hands up the back of my shirt. It felt incredible. Without breaking away from his lips, I reached underneath his tee and felt his bare, sleek chest. My breath came faster, caught up in the frenzy of finally letting go and doing what I’d been dying to do from the second I’d seen Sage on the beach. “Wait,” he said. He reached down and pulled a lever. I let out a little scream as his seat back dropped all the way and I fell on top of him. I loved the feel of his body under mine. I didn’t want a single part of us not touching.
This guy also has condoms in his pocket because he “had a feeling”. The Insta Love is strong with these two.
Sin 6: It’s boring.
This bit is a personal opinion but Boss’s sake this book is BORING. Info Dump after Info Dump, bad mythology, low tension, and one dimensional characters. And the thing is, this book could have been awesome. The premise of a young woman finding a man in photographs in places he could not have been, spanning her whole life, and trying to find who he could be, if he’s a danger to her, could have been amazing. There’s a scene where Clea and Ben were looking over some of her dad’s notes about the man in the pictures and they find a picture of an angel with a baby and a sticky note that says Clea? implying that he thinks the man might be a guardian angel. That could have been amazing if that’s what Sage was. You could even keep the reincarnation angle with Sage being a guardian angel following Clea through her various lifetimes and falling in love with her but failing in his duty to protect her.
Toss the Elixir that isn’t an Elixir and if she absolutely has to be famous, change up Clea’s parents careers and have Clea grow up as the child of a famous actor and supermodel/singer/actress or whatever. Just make it make sense, especially if you’re not going to take advantage of the political tension angle. And if Grant was an actor, he could still travel and do charity work, just with a bigger budget. Ashton Kutcher’s done it!
Conclusion.
*sigh* Elixir is a boring, nonsensical, and tension-less novel that could have been great. Thus, the Library of Hell orders these punishments. For Duff and Allen for writing this, they are condemned to only ever take room temperature showers again, no matter where they are. Clea, for being so dumb and one-dimensional, her camera lenses will always have a smudge on them. Sage for being creepy and a terrible love interest who has PORTRAITS OF HOW HIS PAST LOVERS DIED, he will forever stub his pinky toe on every piece of furniture and wall he has. So let it be recorded. Today’s story time has concluded.
