THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE

 

SYNOPSIS

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.

Title: The invisible life of Addie LaRue

Autor: V. E. Schwab

Publisher: Tor Books

Publication date: October 6, 2020

REVIEW

RATING: ⭐⭐⭐

"Books are a way to live a thousand lives - or to find strength in a very long one".

-

"Why would anyone trade a lifetime of talent for a few years of glory?"

"Because happiness is brief, and history is lasting, and in the end, everyone wants to be remembered"

Video killed the radio star, and all the hype around this book killed Addie LaRue. 

I don't read fantasy. I don't like fantasy, but all the wonderful reviews saying this one was one of the books of the year made me go against my instincts and give it a go, and after reading it I can confirm fantasy is not my genre.

I started it knowing it was not gonna be a fast read (as my friend Susan said "it's one to savor, not devour"), but it dragged along far too much for my liking. It did not engage me enough to make me want to grab my Kindle and keep on reading. 

The premise was very original but it soon became quite repetitive. People forget about Addie the minute she leaves, yeah, we get it, we don't need so many scenes about it (déjà vu much?).

I've read several people saying they started to lose interest in the story once the love interest appears, but quite the contrary happened to me. Once Addie managed to make a real relationship with someone was the moment I first got invested in her life.

I think the present line was much better done than the past one. In the present there's a sense of continuity that helped to engage me while the past line was mostly vignettes where we witness episodes in Addie's life that read more as short stories than as a whole. As soon as I got invested in some side plot or character there was a timeskip several years into the future that left me wanting for more.

I don't think all the different times and places in the past timeline made any kind of impact into the story. She could be in Paris, Florence, New Orleans, WW II or the 70s, that everything read the same. There were not enough details about the place or historical moment to have any significance at all, being this past line basically Addie meeting with the Dark God she made the deal with  (too many meetings) at different times and places.

I wanted to fall in love with Addie but I merely warmed up to her, so the emotional moments felt quite tepid (I was expecting tears and there weren't even sniffles).

One thing I liked about both Addie and Henry was that they're both queer, but that's just a part of who they are, not the one thing that defines them, mentioning it only in passing and not making a whole thing out of it (as we've seen done so many times).

The ending is one of those you love or hate and if you know a bit about me guess what I did?

As a positive I will say it was very beautifully written, with a very poetic language, although there were some overdescriptions that only managed to kill the mood.

"The invisible life of Addie LaRue" is certainly not a bad book (as its average rating shows), but sadly not the one for me.