What I'm Reading: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

 I had read V.E. Schwab’s Shade of Magic series and loved it, so when I heard the buzz about The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, I knew that it was a story written by very capable hands.

Let’s start with the premise, one that is both familiar and original.

A girl makes a deal with the devil – or in this case, the darkness, a god that pre-dates Christianity and tales of Lucifer. Desperate to avoid an arranged marriage and a small, restrained life in her rural French village, Adeline accidentally prays to the gods after dark, and one answers. But she isn’t careful enough with her wording, and in exchange for “freedom”, the darkness grants her the ultimate freedom – she will never age, but she will never be remembered or leave a mark on the world.

The effect is instant, and Addie, as she prefers to be called, isn’t even remembered by her family, who forget they ever had a daughter. She now has to learn how to survive within the boundaries of her curse.

The story unfolds within two timelines: the present day and from the year Addie was cursed (1714). We see how Addie influences history and gives herself a sense of purpose: she finds ways to leave marks in the world through the art of others. She will plant the seed of an idea, meeting someone night after night, for example, as they work on a song together, with the other person waking up every morning with no memory of her influence the night before. 

At the start of every part in the book, there is an example of an artwork that was influenced by Addie LaRue.

The only one who remembers her is the darkness, or Luc, as Addie calls him. He visits on the anniversary of their deal and encourages her to surrender and give up on this life, so he can take her soul. Their relationship evolves over the decades into something very complex, as Addie hates him for what he did to her, but finds herself becoming attached to the one person who can remember her.

Until she meets Henry, that is. Henry works in a bookshop in New York, and after 300 years, is the first human who remembers Addie. *Spoiler alert* It turns out he has made his own deal with the darkness; instead of being a disappointment to everyone around him, he will now be enough for everyone. People see what they need from him, which in Addie’s case, is simply someone to remember her. The catch? His deal came at a very high cost ­– he has only one year before the darkness, Luc, will come to collect his soul.

When I first read the blurb of this book, I originally thought it was going to be mostly a love story between Addie and Henry, but that is only one part of it. From Addie’s perspective, their relationship is special because he is the only one that can remember her. But I found Henry’s actual character to be quite boring and I was less interested in his point of view and backstory, which we start to discover around two-thirds of the way through the book.

For what was already a meandering story across time, this really slowed down the pace of the novel, and I struggled to get past that point. But it’s definitely worth it once you do, because then the focus switches back to Addie’s relationship with Luc, picking up the pace again and hurtling towards the finish.

Reading their scenes together was just so much more compelling. The tension was sky-high as they played a game of cat-and-mouse across the years, with Addie learning Luc’s manipulative ways, while at the same time beginning to look forward to his visits.

We see them enter a romantic, sexual relationship and Luc’s attachment to Addie grows as well in that time – but although he says he loves her, he can never love like a human (it’s definitely more like possession), and his end game is always to get her to surrender. At times their relationship feels psychologically abusive, with each trying to score points against the other. This dance continues to the very end of the book (which I think I can safely say without giving too much away!).

A photo of the first page of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

It’s such a grand tale, and Schwab’s writing style absolutely does it justice. Her descriptive prose is darkly lyrical – the sun “…breaks against the horizon, cracks and spills across the hills…”. I can happily get lost in prose like that, and I got writer envy quite often while reading it.

I did enjoy how Schwab had fun with the history side of things, like how Addie influences art (she often pops up in artwork as a beautiful girl with seven distinct freckles across her face), and who made deals with Luc for success (the likes of Beethoven and Sinatra, for example).

At times it seemed like Addie represented women’s invisible influence on art across history. She was not only the muse for many artists, but often suggested ideas to them repeatedly without them ever remembering that it was her who influenced them, instead thinking it was something they had thought of in a dream.

Ultimately, this book was about many things. But after finishing the last page, I think it was really a story of cunning and survival. It was about Addie learning everything she could about Luc and how a deal with the darkness worked, so she could eventually free herself and have ultimate liberty. It wasn’t an ending I was expecting, and it was very satisfying because of it.

The only question left to ask at the end of it all, is would you do the same? Would you make a deal with the devil to escape an arranged marriage and a caged life in a small village, never to see the world outside it?

Of course you would.

Looking for more fantasy inspiration? Read my post on Alison Goodman’s Lady Helen trilogy.