The Invisible Life Of Addie LaRue
V.E. Schwab
Tor Books
2020, 448p
Read via my local library
Blurb {from the publisher/Goodreads.com}: A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
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 wanted to read this the second I heard about it – it was definitely one of my most anticipated titles for late 2020 release. I almost bought it a couple times but in the end….never pulled the trigger. Maybe because I have a couple of other V.E. Schwab novels on my shelf that I bought which are still unread. I ended up deciding to borrow it from my local library and thought, well if I love it, I’ll buy it.
I liked it. But I didn’t love it.
Adeline LaRue is born in the late 1600s in a small French village. She loves going to the market with her father, who whittles things out of wood but when she is deemed of marriageable age, she can no longer to go the market. Her mother insists on proper behaviour so that she might find a good husband – but a husband of any sort isn’t what Addie wants. A woman who lives in their village shares with her stories of different gods, not the one her parents go to church to pray to, but warns Adeline against praying to the ones after dark. When Adeline cannot escape the fate of marriage any longer however, she finds herself doing just that and makes a bargain – she wants more time and time she will get. She will live without changing but she will not make a mark on this world. No one she meets will remember her after turning away from her. She cannot write or do anything which will leave an impact. She cannot even speak her real name.
Over the centuries, Addie will live the equivalent of many lives, traveling and inspiring artists, having relationships that basically start over each day. Until in the year 2014, when for the first time in nearly 300 years, she meets someone who remembers her.
The idea of this is so fun. Addie basically does not seem able to die – any injury she sustains heals itself, she cannot starve to death although it will feel as though she is. Any injury she leaves on someone else will heal as well, part of the not making a mark thing. But because of the ‘rules’ of her deal, it makes it really hard for her to live as she wanted to do….she cannot find a permanent residence, because no one ever remembers her. She can rent a room one night and be kicked out the next morning by the landlady who has no recollection of taking her money. She also cannot really accumulate items either – she tries, but finds that they vanish and generally only has a few things in her possession at any one time. In the nature of deals made with well, something if not resembling the devil, the devil itself, it’s in the details and there’s a lot Addie forgot to request in this particular contract. It ends when she tires of it and gives up her soul but Addie is nothing if not stubborn and after the maker of her deal assumes she’ll beg for it to end within a year, almost 300 years later she finds herself still having experiences.
Well, sort of. In the several centuries she’s free to live as pretty much an immortal, she only really seems to explore a few places and several of those are also really against her will, as the maker of the deal whisks her away from one place and to another. I think the fact that it was so difficult for Addie to build a life for herself anywhere, it was a disjointed read at times, as Addie would flee situation after situation as people forgot her or kicked her out of places. She had to struggle to find places to sleep, to get food, to get new clothes when required. She’s on the move a lot, which I feel makes it difficult to connect to any place she visits and there’s a lot of things that are glossed over obviously, because she has lived for over 300 years. But it raises questions, like has she just been walking and finding squats for three centuries? Because if so, how is that still exciting? It actually seems utterly exhausting and there’s a real lack of anything really resembling excitement in the story and there were times when I did find myself losing a little bit of interest.
I was excited for the arrival of the character that would remember her and I think that was set up well but to be honest, portions of it felt more fizzer than heart stopping love story. I wanted to get really invested in Addie and Henry but I just really wasn’t to be honest. And I actually really didn’t like the ending, even though I understand why the author went with a less than conventional choice. It suited Addie’s stubborn personality but it just felt like….a bit of a letdown.
The writing is lovely but the characters and story weren’t enough for me to fall in love with it. It was good, but just not great for me. I honestly could’ve done with a lot less of the art stuff and the descriptions of Addie’s seven freckles which look like a constellation and more of her actual travels and experiences, which should’ve spanned a lot more of the world than they seemed to.
7/10
Book #63 of 2021
Going to count this one towards my 2021 Historical Fiction Reading Challenge, hosted by Marg over @ The Intrepid Reader. It’s the 12th book read so far for the challenge.
All The Books I Can Read 
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