【 THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE 】

This surprised me. Up until the very last page I thought it was going to be four stars. And then, BOOM.

Genre: Fantasy
Author: V. E. Schwab
Published: October 2020
Publisher: Tor Books
Pages: 444 (hardback)

This has to be one of the most hyped books at the moment and I was terrified going into it that it would simply blow over in a puff of overhyped wind and let me down. And I confess, for most of the book (at the very back of my mind) I was going, but what is it that has people in such a tizzy. And it was those very last lines that pulled me over into the five-star camp.

Addie LaRue is a beautiful, tragic and frustrating story about a girl who cannot be remembered. After making a deal with the so-called devil, she is cursed to this life of being forgotten. We follow her over three hundred years as she defies the Darkness and tries to make a life for herself, with the main plot (which is on the blurb, no spoilers, don’t worry) being that she finds a boy who remembers.

This is twisty and turny in a way you don’t really expect. But perhaps in hindsight I should’ve known that Schwab simply doesn’t have it in her to write simple fiction – there’s always something epic and scheming lurking in the wings and I just LOVED this.

It was so frustrating getting to a really good point and then the timeline swaps back to two hundred years ago, or whenever, and you have to suffer through a chapter from that time before finding out what happens – only to get swept up in that time and not want to go back. It felt like Schwab was playing as many games with the reader as the Darkness was playing with Addie.

This book is cruel and beautiful, with equal doses of both. I was driving in the car when I finished the audiobook (which was fabulous) and I had to whoop with joy when the book finished and sit there, recklessly driving with no hands, to applaud the book and Schwab’s magnificent feat of weaving together such a satisfying story. My god. THIS is a story, people.

If you haven’t read this yet, then enjoy the ride and enjoy being repeatedly slapped in the face as Addie struggles to make any sort of mark on the world. And I can only hope that you take as much sheer delight out of the ending as I did.

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