The Alchemist

Ultimately, a children's book.
Designed to be inspiring, it is well written and engaging, with a certain charm. It certainly is very short. I read it in 2-3 hours.
However, I haven't been a young adult since well before this book was written. I found the magical thinking and God mambo-jumbo to be a bit wearing. The final well-signaled plot twist would probably have seemed more profound if I were younger and it were more novel to me.
Then there is the point that finding a chest full of gold on somebody else's property in Spain at almost any point in time over the past 200 years is going to involve more than a little litigation, taxation, or bribery. Not completely happily-ever-after.
The setting in time is more than a little confusing. Obviously trying to achieve a certain sort of timeless vibe, there is a conspicuous absence of technology. No trains, planes, or automobiles. No telephone or telegraph. Only revolvers and rifles. I think it is supposed to seem 19th century. That makes the Englishman's interest in alchemy just barely plausible. But then the absence of colonial powers in North Africa, save for one Englishman, seems bizarre. The combatants in the wars in the region are conspicuously unidentified. There is a reference to an unidentified book whose beginning seems somewhat like Pasternak's Dr. Zhivago, but, seeing as this would place the timeline firmly and implausibly in the Franco era, it just further confuses the setting in time for me.