He smells of summer nights, of earth, and moss, and tall grass waving beneath stars. And of something darker. Of blood on rocks, and wolves loose in the woods.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
by V.E. Schwab
Genre: Adult Fantasy
About: Addie LaRue doesn't want to get married. She doesn't want to live the life paved out for her in her small village, where life and death go hand in hand and she's afraid she'll blink and too much time will have slipped away. She wants more. More time. More freedom. More of everything. Then one day her prayers are answered. A being of darkness, one of the old gods, appears to her in the woods. But he doesn't grant wishes - his power is a curse and one she'll have many lifetimes to unwind...
The Good
This book is all over Booktok, Bookstagram, Booktube... Or at least I've seen it everywhere and I was honestly not expecting to love it as there are so many overhyped books - but damn, I loved this. The prose was so dreamy; Schwab's writing floats across the page and I was completely swept away. I loved the descriptions of 1700s France and of the old gods, and how easily attached I was to Addie as she goes from feeling trapped in the restrictive time she was born in, to finding herself trapped in a curse that should have given her boundless freedom. There was so much heart-break in this particular curse. Addie's identity as a person (as a human, even) is taken from her so that she's forced to live this ghost-like existence throughout the ages. The limitations of her curse were really well shown and gave emotional weight to all of her relationships; from her complicated feelings to the old god who cursed her, to her family and friends, to each new person she forms a connection with, however brief. The jumps between her past and current timeline (2014, New York) added so much intrigue and I never minded who or when we were following, every moment captured something that I wanted to hold onto.
The Bad
I really loved Luc's character. His descriptions were probably my favourite as the tease between his wild and dangerous powers, to his moody, obsessive nature was tantalising to watch. He stole every scene he was in. However, as many scenes as we did get of him and Addie together, there didn't seem to be one scene where I understood why this god would care about Addie. What made her special to him? Many of their conversations were repetitive and didn't seem to show a development of feeling on his side. Her feelings for him were easy to see change over time, but I didn't see what sparked the change (or see the change) for Luc.
There were also a lot of variations of this line: it would take years before Addie learned X skill. We see her fail a lot (which I loved) but how she learned to succeed was mostly shown in this kind of throwaway line of, oh well, she learned over the years.
The Somewhat Iffy
Very minor detail but it did take me out of the story when Addie described the taste of Champagne in 1719 as her first experience of drinking it, when in 1716 she tells Luc she drank Champagne from the bottle and this was one of the reasons why she refused to succumb, because of these amazing new experiences she was now having.
Part of Addie's curse was that she could never change physically. Given that she was cursed as a virgin, that would mean that every time she had sex it would be a painful (and bloody) experience for her. Yet this didn't seem to be an issue for her with any of her partners. Everything else about the curse was so well thought off that it struck me as odd that this part either wasn't considered or didn't come with an explanation of why it wasn't an issue.
Overall
Incredible atmosphere, unique magic, a story full of mystery and heart-ache. I loved every page.
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