I would fully recommend “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue” if you like reading historical fantasies. For me, the book had barely any dimensional characters, and a writing style that was too focused on looking pretty rather than being readable.
Published in 2020 by V. E Schwab, the story mainly follows a girl named Adeline LaRue from France, born in the year 1691.On her wedding day, she made a deal to extend her life with the God of Shadows, Luc.
The deal was made, but it wasn't until the morning that she learned there was a drawback;everyone she meets forgets who she was as soon as they walked away or closed a door.
For three hundred years, LaRue survived through thieving and living in empty homes, becoming accustomed to solidarity. That changes when she walks into a bookstore in New York City, and meets a boy who remembers her.
While the premise is interesting, this book has many things wrong with it — first being, the writing style. Schwab is very flamboyant with her writing, focusing more on presentation than a cohesive story readers can follow. Each chapter is full of sentences that circle around the events of the story, meandering until it finally gets back on track.
In addition, the author struggled to give one of their main characters any depth. Throughout the book, LaRue has meetings with Luc, where he randomly appears to convince her to complete her end of the bargain, giving him her soul. After a few hundred years, they start to see each other as lovers. The only problem is, Luc barely has a personality.
Luc is written as a character who is supposed to be cocky, deceiving, holier-than-thou and charming; however, he comes off as a nuisance, and barely relevant to the story, even though he is a huge part of the plot.
Something else the author did not do well is writing the enemies-to-lovers dynamic between LaRue and Luc, establishing him as a flat character and fumbling with delving into their emotions. During each interaction, Schwab only writes about their rivalry, and how every meeting was a game to see who will yield. Nothing about butterflies in the stomach or longing to see each other again. No urge to ask the other to stay. Absolutely nothing.
It is almost like the author's characters were not good enough to have basic human emotions written for them.
This is also seen in Henry Strauss, the boy who remembers LaRue. In the book, Strauss is written to be severely depressed before he met her, constantly needing to rely on little pink pills he calls “little umbrellas” for his “rainy days.” There is no other emotion written for him except for joy when he is with LaRue. No severe anger toward his ex-boyfriend and best friend when he forced a kiss on Strauss. No confusion as to why she returned to the store after being caught stealing. No fear written in his point of view about how little time he has left.
All his personality before he met LaRue was as someone with severe depression who made a stupid decision.
Even though there were some moments where I was fully invested in the story, these moments were brief. I kept going through a cycle of reading 10 bad chapters before finally reaching the one good chapter I had been longing for. When I finally got to the end of the book, Schwab wrote the last chapter as an attempt to keep the story going, but I did not feel sad to see the story end. I felt relieved.
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
If this book sounds right up your alley, then go ahead and read it. I can’t stop you, but I will warn you that it is not worth reading those 448 pages.
Addie Gerber is the Design Director for the Daily Lobo. She can be reached at design@dailylobo.com or on X @dailylobo
