Time of the Living Gargoyles

I picked this up as a light read and it is, but it’s entertaining. Zoe Faust, the heroine, is an herbalist and runs an online shop, who just wants to settle into her new fixer-upper home in Portland, Oregon. Zoe encounters a few problems. First, there is the living stone gargoyle Dorian Robert-Houdin who has stowed away in her things because he needs her help translating an old alchemical text in order to save his life. It turns out Zoe is several centuries old, having accidentally turned herself immortal while studying alchemy in an effort to save a family member. The second problem is a local teen who causes some vandalism and sees Dorian, and the third is the dead contractor who appears on her front porch. Toss in a gang of colorful locals, not least of whom is a cute detective who might like Zoe (and might like him too), and the story unfolds from there.
If this sounds a tad formulaic, it is, but there is enough individualization with the characters and their backstories to keep things interesting. There is a running emphasis on herbal healing and veganism (it turns out that Dorian is a master French chef who has to learn vegan cooking for Zoe) but these things are not preached which ends up making them some of the little details that help the book stand out a little in its own way. There are a few recipes included, which might be useful to readers who aren’t familiar with vegan food. The teen vandal, Brixton, and his friends Ethan and Veronica, are probably the most fun as a group as they interact with each other and the adults around them. One character I hope gets more page-time in the future is Ivan, a retired academic, with an interest in alchemical history. He is introduced in a little detail only because he becomes a suspect in the mystery, but turns out to be totally innocent. Zoe figures this out after Dorian and Brixton try to set up Sherlock Holmes style gathering in which the hero works through all the various motives held by those gathered and reveals the true culprit in public. The reveal of course fails spectacularly for several reasons, not least of which, the one the main characters think is guilty isn’t.
It’ll be interesting to see where the story goes from here. The murder mystery is wrapped up cleanly, but there are enough loose threads, especially concerning Dorian’s problem, to suggest a sequel or two. Towards the end of the novel, Zoe figures out enough to work out a way to temporarily stop Dorian from permanently turning to stone, and of course there’s the possibility of romance with Max, the detective.