The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
by V.E. Schwab
France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
There was something irresistible about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue before I’d even read it. Initially, I had mistaken the novel for one of V.E. Schwab’s young adult novels and dismissed it. I had read one of her YA fantasy novels before and found it quite disappointing. Despite that, I always knew I wanted to return to Schwab’s work, her middle grade work but primarily her adult novels. As Addie LaRue became more and more popular, I realized my mistake in thinking it another of her YA fantasy novels and picked up a copy. Though my past experience with Schwab’s work left me with a hint of weariness, I dove into this novel with hopeful optimism.
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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was simply enchanting. This is a story you sink slowly into, letting it unfurl at its own pace, each thread quietly but thoroughly winding its way around you until you’re fully immersed and unable to look away. Built upon a foundation rooted in the wonderfully simple, undefined existence of ancient gods and the deals they offer, Addie LaRue feels like historical fiction, contemporary, and a bit of folklorish fantasy all blended into one. It defies simple categorization, seamlessly moving between settings and time periods, dipping in and out of moments that define Addie’s immortality, her relationship with the world, a god, and herself.
This story meanders. While the synopsis describes the novel as a “dazzling adventure,” I think those words suggest a level of excitement and action that are not quite present within these pages. Instead, Addie LaRue is pleasantly slow-building with no obvious plot line for much of the novel, just the slow revelation of Addie’s life and the questions of the present. The back and forth structure of the novel works so well, revealing bits and pieces of Addie’s life over the course of 300 years from the early days of her immortality to the shock of finally being remembered by someone in the present timeline. The pacing—as someone who loves slower books—is perfect. Intriguing and emotionally gripping, but wonderfully quiet and unhurried.
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The premise is deliciously intriguing. Addie, who made a deal with a god in darkness and desperation, will live until she tires of it and surrenders her soul, but will never be remembered by anyone she meets. The moment she is out of their sight, it is as if she never existed at all. It is an unimaginably lonely existence, but one Addie is determined to make the most of. After all, it was her desire to truly live and see the world that drove her desperation in the first place. This story is just beautiful. It explores questions of how to live a meaningful life when you don’t mean anything to anyone in a lasting way, when loneliness is your most constant companion or when feelings of inadequacy outweigh everything else. It’s written with such fantastic emotional depth, and it felt so real. It’s unpredictable, quiet but buzzing with an underlying current of mystery and simple but alluring magic.
As the story progresses, the intrigue surrounding Luc—the ancient god—and Addie grew and grew. It was the most constant tug I felt throughout the reading experience, the need to learn more about their past together, to read about their strange and shifting dynamic. Luc is a fantastically crafted villain. Their interactions and the complexities of their relationship were utterly compelling and easily one of my favorite elements of the novel. I genuinely could not get enough of it.
Rich in emotion and evocative, gripping description, Schwab’s writing within The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is simply delectable. I hung on to every word. To capture an immortal life in a way that feels both intimate and sprawling enough to feel genuinely endless seems no easy task, but Schwab’s careful crafting of Addie’s life and character was phenomenal. Though Addie has lived 300 years—and readers experience many of those moments with her—there’s never a point during which the emotions or thoughts that are so familiar to Addie feel repetitive. Her existence is so marked by cycles of these emotions–loneliness, grief, rage, and overwhelming sadness all balanced with a lovely sort of relentless hope and optimism about humanity and art and the beauty of truly living—that this book could’ve easily dissolved into something that felt somewhat tedious or boring. Far from that, each page was a beautiful, thoughtful read.
To describe all the ways in which I think this story is an absolute triumph would reveal far too much of the story’s heart. The Invisible life of Addie LaRue was simply mesmerizing.