The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab | A Story I’ll Never Forget

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue has been on my TBR for as long as I can remember. It had no cover or description, but Victoria Schwab’s tweets about it where more than enough to fuel my love of this story. And obviously, it’s a Schwab book. As if I’d ever skip one!? Hell no! Anyway, Addie LaRue defied all my expectations. It was everything I hoped for and so, so much more. Spoiler alert; this is a 5-star review – obviously!

“Small places make for small lives. And some people are fine with that. They like knowing where to put their feet. But if you only walk in other people’s steps, you cannot make your own way. You cannot leave a mark.”

My Review

Victoria Schwab’s writing is always incredible, but in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue, it really shows how incredible it truly is. I got lost in the pages of this story, read about 150 pages after not having read at all for a month and I simply couldn’t put it down. Picking up a Schwab book feels like coming home to me, I find comfort in her writing, her worlds and her characters. I’d been waiting on Addie LaRue for so long and it was more than anything I could ever hope for in a book.

Addie LaRue has everything I love in a story, and even things I didn’t know I loved until I read it. There’s history, culture and art, a bookshop, stories, lovable characters, friendships… the list goes on and on. A new love I discovered was reading about characters older than myself. It was such a breath of fresh air! I can never really find adult books that interest me like YA does, so I’m very happy to finally have this gem on my bookshelf.

Addie is one of the most interesting characters I read about in a very long time. I can relate to her in so many ways; her wish for freedom, her loneliness, her love for books and art. Victoria has written her so well, Addie felt real. I felt her emotions, both bad and good. While I wasn’t sure how I felt about Henry, I quickly fell in love with him. He felt as if he could never be “enough”, which is something I’ve dealt with a lot in my life and could relate to. I found pieces of myself within both of these characters, which makes this story even more special to me.

Addie LaRue takes place of the space of 300 years, and many different places in the world. It doesn’t really stick to chronological order, which could’ve been confusing but that’s not the case at all. Seeing Addie in different times and places was probably one of the most interesting parts of the story. Reading about the place she grew up in, discovering new parts of the world and historical events that I learned about in school felt magical to me.

My Rating

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue was so much more than I could ever hope for. I love this book with all my heart, and it’s definitely a 2020 favourite!

About The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force.

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.

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