“If a person cannot leave a mark, do they exist?”

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, by V.E. Schwab

Summary

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.

My Thoughts

As expected, I am adding yet another magical, character-focused dark academia to my review list. I really do have a type. This book had me hooked from the beginning. You can feel the desperation in Addie as she makes a deal with the devil, the realization as she navigates through her new world. The chapters alternate for the most part; modern-day chapters with Addie and Henry, who remembers her, and chapters in the past with Addie navigating through history and dealing with Luc, the devil deity she made a deal with. I love seeing her work through WWII and the French Revolution especially, learn more about society as she goes on, and do her best to make it. We see how she has to navigate the world when people forget her, and the sheer hope in her when she is remembered for the first time.

At it’s core, this book is about character. It’s about Addie first and foremost; Addie’s growth, how she changes and evolves, how her relationships with both Luc and Henry change her. The ending is melancholy and yet hopeful simultaneously, and I swear, I shrieked when I finally finished it. It was somehow terrible yet perfect. My biggest gripe with the book is how Schwab writes history; I understand that to a certain extent, she was writing what she was familiar with, but I find it crazy that in 400 years of history, Addie goes to two places: Europe, and America. She literally doesn’t go to another continent, despite years and years of Indian, Chinese, African, etc history out there. There are so many cultures we just don’t see her exploring in her flashbacks at all. It’s a very Western-focused book. It didn’t detract from the reading experience for me personally, but I do wish the author had included a broader view of history when writing the novel instead of doing the usual thing of having a white protagonist who only worries about white history.

Review: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

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