Booklog 99/2020: V.E Schwab: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

[jacey]

It's three hundred years ago in a small French village, Addie is doomed to marry a widower with children – a replacement for his recently deceased wife. Desperate to avoid her fate she calls upon the gods for help, but you should never call upon a god when it's dark. Instead of a benevolent daylight god, Addie gets the Dark himself, and does a deal. He can have her soul when she's finished with it in return for life… a long life… even immortality… until she decides it's time to surrender. It's a blessing, but it's also a curse. Throughout her long life Addie will not be able to make any mark upon the world, and everyone will forget her the instant she's out of their sight. It's a strange life. She can't make friends, have her own home, hold down a job, or take a lover for more than one night without starting afresh every morning. She learns to navigate the world invisibly, her three hundred years punctuated by visits from Dark to see if she's ready to surrender. And then, in modern New York, she meets Henry, the only one who doesn't forget her.

We see Addie's history as well as her trials in the present day. She flits from situation to situation, the only one she can relate to is Dark – or Luc as she comes to call him – until suddenly she meets Henry.

This is a book about the imbalance of power. Addie and Dark (whom she calls Luc) are connected is a way she can't begin to comprehend. She hates him, but she also comes to rely on him because he's the only one who truly knows her. It's a kind of elongated Stockholm Syndrome which happens over a period of centuries. I was intrigued by this book and I kept on reading, though there were times when I could have done with it moving forward at a smarter pace. It's had a lot of good reviews because it's different, but it's by no means perfect. The style is semi-poetic at times. It's definitely at the literary end of the fantasy genre.