Alchemy of Secrets (Book 1): My Notes So I Don’t Forget Everything When Book 2 Comes Out

⚠️ Heavy spoilers, including the ending. I’m writing this for my future self.

I just finished Stephanie Garber’s Alchemy of Secrets, and it’s only book 1. By the time book 2 is out, I know I’ll have forgotten who lied to whom. So here’s the cheat sheet.

The premise
The story is set in Los Angeles, with old Hollywood lurking behind everything. Holland St. James is a folklore grad student whose thesis is about Hollywood deaths supposedly linked to deals with the devil. Her father, Ben Tierney, was a famous director who left her elaborate puzzles and a safety deposit box. Both of her parents died fifteen years ago in a highly publicized tragedy: her father shot her mother.

Who’s who

• Holland St. James: our heroine. She’s trying to find out the truth about her parents’ deaths.
• Ben Tierney & Isla Saint: Holland’s father (the director) and mother (a glamorous Golden Age actress).
• Vic VanVleet: a film director and Ben’s former fiancée. She has complicated feelings about the Tierney-Saint family and is hostile toward Holland.
• January: Holland’s twin, who shares her necklace and eye tattoo. She’s the one who secretly sent Gabe.
• Jake: Holland’s boyfriend. He was assigned to be her “perfect boyfriend,” then turns up dead.
• Gabe Cabral: says January sent him to protect Holland. He keeps taking or interfering with clues. Later he says the Bank lied to him.
• Adam Bishop: the new professor, who turns out to be the devil. His ability looks like charm, but he actually erases and rewrites memories.
• Mason Bishop: Adam’s brother. He looks like the mastermind but was really the scapegoat, and he ends up trapped as a ghost in the Hollywood Roosevelt.
• The Watch Man: can tell you exactly when you’ll die.
• The Professor: Holland’s former mentor, who runs the First Bank of Centennial City and teaches the secret class Folklore 517.
• Manuel Vargas: the Bank’s representative, who delivers news of the safety deposit box.
• Chance Garcia: Holland’s longtime best friend and a former child actor from The Magic Attic, still working in the entertainment industry. He worries about her safety and warns her about Adam. Gabe treats him as someone who can’t be trusted, and Chance leaves hurt and confused.
• Cat: a Folklore 517 classmate who hunts for occult activity at local haunts and works on the lot at Jericho Monroe Entertainment (JME). Adam touches her arm and rewrites her memory so she believes she has to leave. That’s when Holland realizes his power isn’t charm.
• Eileen Cheng: another Folklore 517 classmate, a personal assistant under a strict NDA. She picks Holland up after the Bank.

What happens

1. Holland receives a box from her father through the Bank. Jake is murdered, and the Watch Man says she has 29 hours to live unless she finds the Alchemical Heart.
2. The clues lead her through her father’s films, a props studio, and the Roosevelt. Gabe and Adam both tag along, and she never knows which one to trust.
3. The big twist: Holland is stuck in a time loop. Every Halloween, just before midnight, she dies and everything resets. Her visions and nosebleeds are leftovers from previous loops.
4. In every loop, the one who kills her is Adam. He persuades her to follow him, kisses her, takes her necklace, and stabs her.
5. Mason offers help if she’ll resurrect him and kill Adam. Holland refuses.

The ending

• The necklace was a decoy. The real Alchemical Heart is the Professor’s journal, which was in Holland’s bag the whole time.
• The Heart is a sentient being that can change shape, and it appears as Manuel Vargas.
• Holland’s wish is for the Heart to swap the brothers: Adam is bound to the Roosevelt as a ghost in Mason’s place, and Mason is freed.
• The Heart can also bring her parents back. She decides against it. Her parents died fifteen years ago, and bringing them back would ripple through everyone whose lives have been shaped by their absence, or by their deaths. She also doesn’t get to choose her own ability. It will manifest later.
• Finally, she sends the Heart into the future so it finds a new owner who will use it wisely.
• Epilogue: the Professor accepts that Holland no longer has the Heart, says it will resurface on the list’s next date, and renews her job offer at the Bank. The next morning Holland is running on the beach, Mason joins her and thanks her, and January calls. Mason vanishes, leaving a black-and-gold business card in the sand, the same branding tied to the devil’s deals.

Questions to carry into book 2

• Did Ben really shoot Isla? The official story says he did, but his love life was far more tangled than it looked (a former fiancée, Vic VanVleet, and rumors of other women). The Professor even called the details of that night misdirection. What actually happened fifteen years ago?
• What is Holland’s new ability? (It’s said to reveal itself in about two weeks.)
• What does the black-and-gold card mean, and what does Mason want now that he owes Holland?
• Where did the Heart go, and who is its next owner?
• Whose side is Gabe really on, and what happened to him? He vanishes at the end.
• Where is January ? What does January want?
• Will Holland take the Bank’s job offer?

My thoughts: I like the old movies background and the folklore very very much. But this is a very light read since I finished it too quick. Hehe.

I don’t like why January can never be contacted for more than half the book. But seems everybody knows her and she is the only person who can identify the fake and real motives of each person that hangs around Holland. This dragging moment is really annoying.

Book 2 release date: sometimes in 2027.