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

As Blink-182 once said "nobody likes you when you're twenty three" and I, a nobody, did not like Addie LaRue
(i really hope i got the age she was immortalised at correctly otherwise this joke was a total flop)

This book, written by Victoria Schwab under her adult fiction pseudonym of V.E. Schawb, follows the story of Adeline LaRue, a young French girl from the countryside escaping an unwanted fate. She manages this by making a deal with the devil, a deal that has significant consequences. By becoming immortal, Addie loses the ability to be remembered by anyone she meets or to be able to make her mark on the world. This novel follows Addie's 300 years of various lovers, various names, various countries, and various experiences. However, the story truly begins when Addie, after over 200 years, finally encounters someone who remembers her.

this cover is STUNNING

Addie LaRue was something. Personally, I found Addie to be an extremely aggravating character to read in the perspective of for almost 600 pages. I thought that she was quite uninteresting despite the fact that she is the protagonist and has lived three hundred years. How a character manages to bore me even though they technically have 300 years of history to read through is truly a task.

My biggest issue for this book, which basically didn't have much of a traditional plot line and was extremely character focused, was that the characters felt super hollow to me. The only exception to this was Luc. Due to the lack of decent character building for Addie in particular, I felt like there were a lot of moments where the writing was very tell vs show. For example, it was emphasised (but not written explicitly) that Addie was super special and talented and unique not like any other girls who are only interested in marriage and babies without actually giving any evidence for why this was. The only "interesting" thing I can remember Addie doing or even her participating in any hobbies, outside of drawing Luc's face as a young girl, was the possibility of her being a spy for the allied forces during WW2 but this was barely even touched upon apart from 2 brief references. I guess the intention was that Addie was meant to be an inspirational person to the many side characters throughout this novel; as a muse, but she did not come across as that interesting to me. In fact, despite her being the protagonist of the story, her story line wasn't even my favourite - I much preferred Henry's story and I wished there was more focus on him.
Luc was an unlikeable character on purpose, and I truly did not like him, but he was the most concrete character to me. The rest of the cast, particularly the side characters and the several lovers of Addie, were genuinely like cardboard cutouts and could probably be switched out with one another without me noticing, or even anything in the story changing much, if at all. Perhaps this was an artistic decision to make a point but I thought it was flawed characterisation and writing.

Also, I will touch on the lack of diversity briefly. Honestly, I wasn't that bothered about the lack of characters of colour in this read as I do not make the habit of expecting white authors to give me books about non-white people and their lives. However, I thought it was an interesting decision to mention major historical events such as the French Revolution and both of the World Wars without a single mention of the Transatlantic Slave Trade or segregation/Jim Crow laws in the 20th century. This was especially odd to me as France was a very large player in the cruel enslavement of stolen Africans and Addie resided in the United States during the period of segregation. Victoria Schwab did not need to go into detail about this, but not even a brief mention was given? That definitely made my brows raise.

However, this book was not a wholly negative experience for me. I thought Schwab's writing was honestly really beautiful and poetic, though it did feel "overwritten" at times, especially nearing the end of the novel where the purple prose started to seep into the dialogue. But on the whole, the writing gave the book an appropriate atmospheric feel to it. On another note, and this is not necessarily a negative point to make, but sometimes this really read like fan-fiction to me. However pretty the writing of this book was, it was not perfect. I read this book via audiobook as well as physically reading it and the flowery dialogue and text was definitely more noticeable when I was listening to the book. The dialogue often sounded unnatural and this likely added to the disconnect I felt towards the characters. The writing also came across as very repetitive at times - there are other connective words to use outside of and. Not to mention my biggest pet peeve throughout this read: "freckles like stars" "too green eyes" "black curls" repeated incessantly during the novel, so much so I came to the conclusion that Addie's freckles are her only personality trait.

On a more positive note, I did find the last 150 pages of this book when the plot was picking up and actually felt more tangible to be more bearable but it wasn't enough to salvage this whole read for me. I also really enjoyed the multi-media format of the physical book and the audiobook was for sure a life saver for me during this read.
It was disappointing to not like this book as I was super excited to pick it up, but I guess there are always some misses. 

Overall Rating: ★★