The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue | Review

My name is Addie LaRue...

I know, another 5 star review? But hear me out. I didnt bawl over the ending, it isn't my favorite book of the year, and I'm not over the moon gushing. But Ill be damned if I cant say that this is one of most lovely books with an enchanting premise if I've ever read one. A book doesn't need to be perfect to be 5 stars, and this one isn't, but it was amazing. So let's begin...

Some she's found by accident, others in the course of this or that adventure. She keeps them tucked away, like slips of paper between pages of her book.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a story of a girl, born in France in the early 1700's. Her small village life gets all the more restricting and suffocating as her family plans to marry her off. She sees the world differently than most in her village, and their idea of the life she should have does not work for her.

On the evening of her wedding she makes the mistake of praying to any god that will answer her, but the only god that was listening was one of night. Luc enters and strikes a deal with Addie, to give her freedom from her life. She accepts without realizing that true freedom is to pass through the world with no strings attached, and so she finds herself immortal, walking among humans only to be forgotten as soon as they leave sight of her.

That is, until someone doesn't forget her...

I am the one who sees kindling and coaxes it to flame.

I want to get my biggest praise out of the way first. The way Schwab writes is outstanding. I don't think I've come across a book that does prose like this, and gets away with it so beautifully. There was SO many analogies, similes/metaphors and "one liners" that never came across cringey, out of place, eye-rolling, cliche, or beat you over the head. I'm just incredibly impressed by her writing. 

Who you sacrifice to matters less than what you sacrifice for.

Normally I don't like slower paced books, and that's definitely what this felt like, but with her writing, and possibly just my mind set and the fall weather and such, it just worked for me. So if you don't like slower reads with little plot, maybe this will work for you too, but I can see how it might not. The story is really just her retelling her life over a 300 year time span with it occasionally jumping to the present (2014).

People talk about carrying torches for old flames, and it's not a full fire, but Addie's hands are full of candles.

Another strong positive is the character. Not characters, but THE character. Addie LaRue was fantastic. I was so enraptured in her life, her stubbornness, her strength, her vision and so much more. We see her battle Luc over many years as he tries to get her to surrender her immortal life so that he may claim her soul.

We begin to see a startling similarity between the two as they both find their own ways of stoking the fires of artist throughout time, but done so in very different ways.

She missed him the way someone might miss the sun in the winter, though they still dread its heat.

The nuance in which she is so eloquently written was fantastic. The way she battles Luc with her mind and words, but then how she struggles with still wanting to/ having to face him. After all he is the only person that can remember her, that can say her name. That is until Henry...

Blink and you're halfway though, paralyzed by the idea that whatever you choose to do, it means choosing not to do a hundred other things.

Henry is my least favorite part of the book. He is introduced as the only person that has been able to remember her in 300 years. It teases us slowly as they spend more time together, which I didnt mind because we still jump back to Addie's past in France, Germany, Italy and so on. But soon it gets to a section that is all about him, and that's when the book slowed down for me a lot. His story didnt grip me, I didnt really for sorry for him, and I found him (to be blunt) weak. I didnt feel the passion for him. I also began to worry that the book may not address the question, "Does Addie only like him because he is the only human that can remember her?"

Easy to stay on the path when the road is straight and the steps are numbered.

But by the end I was very happy that it wrapped up very nicely in a way I appreciated Addie's story. It really secured the 5 star rating from falling to a 4. 

And this is what good-byes should be.
Not a period, but an ellipses, a statement trailing off, until someone is there to pick it up.
It is a door left open.
It is drifting off to sleep.

It was a story beautifully written, a strange long life wonderfully captured.

Six of Crows

 Better to have terrible truths than kind lies.

Ok wow...alright Six of Crows I see you.

I feel like I'm late to this, that's obvious.

This book has been around booktube for a while, its pretty popular. To me it seemed to come off as a fantasy romance with a side plot of a heist.

So I never thought I would end up liking it, Im not huge into YA romance, it usually doesnt strike the balance I prefer. I feel like people underplayed that this really just a character driven novel. Sure there are inklings of relationships, they struggle with knowing if they should or would want to get together. But thats just because they all have incredibly difficult and troubling pasts.

Almost all of them were compelling, and the ones that weren't still came across well. I was just really happy with how the characters were written, their stories and how they interacted. That was definitely the highlight. My vote is for Inej the pirate queen!

So what else was there? Lets start with the powers.

By the end it went from PG13 to rated R real fast, there was some nasty stuff happening with those Grisha Powers. I wasn't fully wrapped around the powers. I think its because I didnt know they would play such a role. My understanding of the Grisha-Verse was heavily skewed. The way I interpreted this series and Shadow and Bone was that they were in the same universe but so far apart that it wasnt obvious. It seemed to me that Shadow and Bone was deep fantasy, and Six of Crows was more modern and so had less magic. But they are only 5ish years apart. I just had to explain this because this affected my comprehension as I was reading and it wasnt until later I realized how much these powers would effect the book and by then I knew I was missing some stuff. (Which isnt all bad because that means Ill have a really good reread!)

Additionally to the powers was the world and different nations! All of that was really interesting as we got a look into how different nations are, their culture, way of life, and most importantly to this book, their prejudices.

This was so much better than I thought it would be, I was very happy with it and looking forward to the sequel!

No mourners.

No funerals.

Night of the Dragon

They tell stories, nowadays, of a wandering fox. Most times it would appear as a humble peasant girl, but sometimes as a yokai with glowing golden eyes.

Immediately following Soul of the Sword, the 3rd and final book of the Shadow of the Fox series picks up with our crew heading to a port to catch a ride for the Moon Islands and stop the villains from using the Dragon Scroll.

This book, for the most part, was a very good mesh of the first and second book. We have some small, episodic like adventures like in book one. And then there is a good amount of character interaction and romance from book two.

It isnt all good, however, I actually have quite a few issues with the book.

Yumekos fox powers get  far more powerful for some reason. Early on in the novel I was getting annoyed that her throwing out her blue fox fire would STILL startled her opponents (because they dont know its not real fire) We got alot of that in the first two books. Then all of a sudden her fox fire was real and burned people. I dont know if I missed something because she didnt really seem to question this or fill in any blanks.

There was a couple more issues that the author actually managed to correct later in the novel. So though through a good portion of the book I was getting annoyed, or irked at the development, she managed to come up with good reasoning, or even better, not fall into some bad tropes.

I will say one thing that always throws me off in books is when the thing you expect to be at the end, is SMACK dab in the middle. It really threw off the pacing and made most of the rest of the book feel drawn out. It didnt help either when the last half turns into a long "climax" of confusing, convoluted reveals and unnecessary battles.

For the most part I was planning on giving this a 3 stars, but I think the ending (mostly after the climax) really pulled it up from that lower score. I think this book evoked a lot of emotion in me. I appreciated the consequences of this war and the fights. By the end I really did come to enjoy the little gang we picked up along the way.

Overall, the climax was a bit over-reaching. This seemingly episodic YA fantasy trilogy had the ending of a 5 book long epic fantasy, which was incredibly jarring. But I liked how the author didnt always take the obvious or easy way out with some of the plot points and I say is a solid ending to her series. 

I would very much enjoy a 4th novel, with lesser stakes, and some more episodic adventures of the roaming Kitsune once more...

I wanted to go into a few spoiler discussions below with some specifics about the ending.

Spoilers:

I didnt like how early on they set up that this naive peasant girl was going to be the new leader of the moon clan. BUT as I mentioned above, the author corrected that toward the end by letting a lot of time pass before Yumeko took over.

Furthermore on that point, I felt like the first two books didnt focus enough on Yumeko being without a home, or that being an orphan bothered her. Its why alot of the mother/father/moon island clan stuff didnt fit really well for me. I didnt feel like she needed to be, essentially, a special chosen one. BUT AGAIN, I like how the author showed Yumeko knowing there was more to do in the world and she left to explore. The letter where she described the fox yokai being seen at the places we previously visited was really sweet and struck a cord within me. Like I said above, I would like a nice novel of her roaming adventures.

Some of the stuff I feel like the author avoided was obviously the resurrection trope. I was really nervous she was going to revive everyone that died which would have been...so bad. And I feel like I already explained how she avoided or corrected my annoyance with Yumeko being the leader, and wanting to find a home and stay there.

Most of the Seigetsu stuff went completely over my head. I dont understand about the bead, and his whole goal, it felt out of left field. Also with Yumekos mothers pain in that cave, and the mask...it was just alot all at once. I still didnt feel particularly attached to the mothers character or story since we got it all in the last half of the book. The ending fight with Seigetsu in general went on too long. But it was cool to see Yumeko try to outsmart him. There was just ALOT about the climax I didnt care for. But it had some good moments like Daisuke and Okames fight. Suki bringing back their spirits to help Yumeko in the end. 

Speaking of which. In general I thought Sukis whole thing was pretty cool. She is the first chapter we get ALL the way back in book one, which honestly REALLY stuck with me. I felt so bad for her. But I like how she became their guide, and the fact that she led them when they were all alive, and then again when most of them were dead...that was some good stuff right there.

In conclusion, like I said, Climax was a bit much for me, but the ending was really really good.