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.