The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – Book Review

Hi friends! It has been a hot minute since I posted. I’m technically still on hiatus, but I wanted to share my The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Book Review with you this week. I’m still hard at work on my masters, so my hiatus might be a bit longer and my posts might be a bit sporadic. Enjoy!

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Title: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Author: V.E. Schwab

Rating: 3.5 Stars

Genre: Fantasy/Historical Fiction

Content Warnings: 

Format: eARC

Publisher: Titan Books

Date Published: October 6th 2020

Goodreads Description: 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.

I received a review copy from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

Review

To be honest with you, I was initially going to give this book 4 stars. But while writing this review (and reading some other reviews) I decided to lower the rating to 3.5. I’ve also decided not to CAWPILE this book, and to just write where my feelings take me.

Writing

Let’s talk about writing first. I won’t say that I’m a particular fan of Schwab’s work. This is only the second book I’ve read by her, and one thing stands out to me: she writes beautifully, but it’s all repetitive. The first 100 pages of Addie are beautiful. The next 300 are more of the same. Eventually, I got bored with hearing about Addie’s freckles and how quickly time moves on. Trust me, every millennial is constantly in the throes of existential crisis. We know the dread.

For me, writing works best when it’s simple and direct. I’ve never been a fan of flowery writing or over-used descriptions. Considering the length of this book, nothing of note really happens on-page. We hear about Addie’s adventures, but we hardly ever see them play out. It’s just 400 pages of existential angst.

Characters

That being said, Addie and Henry are both very relatable characters in this instance. I too feel the march of time breathing down my neck, and I mourn the lives that I will not get to live. Blink and suddenly you’re 24 and jobless. Blink again and you’re halfway to the grave (millenials will know the feeling).

I liked Henry well enough, and his character motivations were solid. But he felt more like a background character to Addie. A means to an end. I didn’t feel like she actually loved him.

I saw Addie as a very self-centred character. Always looking for ways to make her mark, and effectively using people to do it. Instead of her telling the stories of those history has truly forgotten, she only ensures that she is remembered. I’m not sure what Schwab was going for here, but I expected more. You have a 300-year-old woman with infinite memory, yet she doesn’t use that memory at all.

It makes me think of all the people history has forgotten or erased (especially women, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people) and it makes me think Schwab missed an opportunity to have Addie play a part in remembering them.

Worldbuilding

Instead, Addie only strives to remember herself. This book is very euro-centric. And there’s nothing wrong with that. I think Schwab would have been criticized either way, but I find it hard to believe that Addie would only stick to the western world. She could have travelled to Africa, Asia, Australia, but instead, she stays stuck in New York? I get it, NYC is cool. But so is Cairo, Lagos, Johannesburg, Windhoek, Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, the list goes on.

Personally, I’m tired of New York. I haven’t even been there and I know more about it than I know about Pretoria (SA’s capital). Does the USA know other places in the world exist?

I know I can’t judge Addie LaRue for what I wanted it to be. But the synopsis lead me to believe that we would be seeing “adventures across centuries and continents”. We only see adventures in Europe (Italy and France, to be precise) and New York. I expected more.

Relationships

The one thing I really did like was the relationship between Addie and Luc. Yes, it’s filled with a lot of red flags. But it’s still a fictional relationship and I like my fictional relationships to be messy (not my RL ones). Overall I think the relationship is well explored, but I would have loved to see more of it on-page. We get small snippets here and there that give a lot of information, but I wanted more.

I’m just a fan of the hero falling for the bad guy. Sue me.

Let me know your thoughts on The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue – Book Review.

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