The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

V.E. Schwab

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.

-Excerpt taken from Goodreads.

Check Goodreads to see the book’s ratings.

My Opinion

(5 / 5) I’m not sure I can put into words the beauty of this story. Honestly, I’m still reeling from it. It was poignant, thought provoking and endearing. I looked forward to listening to it every day. 

In 1714 France, Addie is being forced to marry. She wants to be free, to only belong to herself. So in a desperate moment, she agrees to a bargain for her soul. This bargain ends up being a curse and not one person remembers her. Her parents, friends, anybody she has met all forget her within seconds.

It broke my heart but in ways that made me want to turn right back to the start and listen to it all over again. It was easy to get wrapped up in Addie’s world and wonder how in the world she survived it and how would you survive it. Would you make the same decisions?

In this life she lived, I was thoroughly entertained even when there was not a lot going on. I’m used to a lot of action and many story lines happening at once. This was very different but just as entertaining, if not more. To me, that’s one of the signs of incredible writing. I didn’t want it to end but I couldn’t wait to finish it either.

The positives and negatives to her life were fascinating. How she survived, what she did to work around the curse, the people she met, the mark she was able to leave and how she did it all were fascinating. It was a difficult way to live and she found the positives in each day.

I actually didn’t love the ending, I wanted it to take a different turn. With that being said, it was still satisfying and well-written.

I highly recommend this book. The content included minimal swearing, an attempted rape (very few details), a small F/F relationship (few details), M/F relationship (few intimate details), selling her virginity (intense but few details), she was assumed dead and had to dig her way out of a pile of dead bodies, a knife was stabbed into a thigh, and drugs.

Thank you to MacMillan Audio and Tor Books for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review.

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