The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue | Arc Review

Thank you to Titan Books and Netgalley for the review copy in exchange for an honest review. This does not change my opinion in anyway.

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.
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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.
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But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore, and he remembers her name.

A standalone book by Victoria Schwab. Of course I had to read that. I have a bit of a hit and miss kind of relationship with her books. Sometimes I love them (ADSOM, the Archived) other times they just aren’t for me (Vicious). The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue kind of falls in between.

We start this book with a focus on Addie of course who tells us her story of how she became immortal but unmemorable alternated with chapters of the present. The question of how it is to live like that is an interesting one. Because we all seem to want to leave a mark on the world. Addie can’t. Not even her parents remembered her when she returned. It was as if she had never existed. Never had been born. How do you keep going with that?

Regardless of how interesting of a question that was, I wasn’t really grabbed by this book until Henry was introduced. Henry gives us another dynamic to the story and he is such a soft hearted boy. My heart aches for him.

I never had that with Addie. She was fine to follow through the book but I didn’t really care about her as a person. I guess she wasn’t memorable. #oops And that is the biggest reason I guess that this book didn’t quite strike a cord with me.

I liked the premise of the book but I was never really invested in Addie’s story. The darkness she made her deal with could have been interesting but he was never truly menacing and his interest in Addie was honestly creepy. Their ‘romance’ never really worked for me either. And the ending was a mess for me. It was so obvious.

4 thoughts on “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue | Arc Review”

I’ve heard a lot of conflicting thoughts about this author! Some people love her and others hate her. I want to try out reading one of her books, but I don’t like the sound of her darker books (I.e. Vicious). Do you recommend I start with this book or somewhere else?

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I have super mixed feelings about Schwab’s work as well – not quite the same (ie. that I like some of her books and not others) but more so that all the books I’ve read by her were very average reads for me. Your review confirms for me that I don’t need to make plans to read this one…

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I don’t even try with Schwab anymore. It’s almost like some other author wrote the Shades of Magic books. Everything else I have read of hers has been riddled with writing inconsistencies. 😛

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I have had a rough time with Schwab as well, I swore I was the only one so it’s comforting that I am not alone! I think I will still give this one a go, mostly because the premise is more appealing to me than her other stuff was? So maybe that will help? If not, then I will know she’s just not for me! Thanks for the great review!

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