The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

An Addie LaReview for Addie LaRue

by Perihelion

Summary, from Goodreads:

“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.”

V.E. Schwab is such a strange author because one of her books (Vicious) is one of my all-time favorite books, while everything else she's written has been mediocre to terrible. I don't know how she did it. To be honest, I did read this book knowing I wasn't going to like it, because sometimes I think it's helpful to read things I dislike so that I have a better idea of what to avoid in my own writing, or so that I can figure out how to articulate tropes that bother me. And boy did I find a lot in this book!

First off: Schwab has a real problem with writing female characters. Addie has no personality. Wanting to get out of town is not a personality! She has the same problem as Lila from Shades of Magic where she only exists to be Not Like the Other Girls. The other female characters only exist to show that she is Not Like Other Girls. And this bothers me so much because there are legitimately girls out there who have complicated relationships with Not Feeling Like They Belong With The Other Girls, because they don't perform femininity enough to be accepted, or they just have personalities that mesh better with the way boys are socialized than the way girls are socialized, but no one takes these girls' stories seriously because of characters like Addie LaRue, who are just ~better~ and ~speshul~ and ~more interesting~ (or so the narrative insists, without any proof to support the thesis). What does Addie do when she gets to live forever? Wanders around Paris, London, and NYC hooking up with other randos with no personalities, and that's pretty much it. Every time she drinks a coffee she thinks of 3 cities (never any details about them!) and also they're all European cities, except for New York and New Orleans. Small world for someone who sold her soul just so she can see the world and all its glory!

Also, I don't think the mechanics of her curse were well thought-out. She can't make a mark: she's cursed to be forgotten by everyone. So if she spills something, the spill magically disappears. But the container she tipped over is still tipped over? And she can steal things? People will notice that and wonder what's going on. That's still making a mark. This was supposed to be some commentary on, like, the importance of being able to make art and express yourself, but it was too shallowly written to mean anything.

If Addie LaRue steps on a bug and kills it, does the bug resurrect? Why can she plant a tree but not build a house? Why can she burn down a building but not leave footprints? I'm not asking fantasy to follow the laws of physics, obviously. But the internal logic needs to be consistent. It is very clear that Schwab did not really put any thought into her metaphor. It’s just pretentious.

Speaking of pretentious: the writing style of this book was truly painful to read. It's the kind of overdone prose where you can just tell the author thought they were being deep and profound with every single sentence. It’s the type of thing that gets slapped onto a black-and-white stock photo and uploaded to Pinterest. It was just so overwrought and dramatic, especially considering the truly insipid lives of the characters, who pretty much only scoot around this silly squeaky-clean version of NYC to their cutesy speakeasies and theater shows and underground concerts.

The historical sections were just as irritating. Nothing about them felt like the author had done any research into their respective settings. Nothing about Addie's village felt like a 1700s French village. Addie seemed like a completely modern person copy-pasted into this place, which itself had no personality or definition.

ANOTHER thing that bothered me: these """"old gods"""" that she learns to worship from the Cackly Old Lady Character. What fuckin’ "old gods"? There is plenty of actual folklore to draw from here, why be so vague and dull? Was having Luc be the actual devil too spicy for Schwab? Coward!

Then there was the inclusion of actual, real historical figures as Luc's victims. It wasn't meant to be funny, but when Beethoven showed up, I started laughing out loud. This is the sort of thing that happens in less-serious fantasy or childrens' books; it's inherently reductive to these REAL PEOPLE (!!) to say ohhhhh they sold their soul to this Ambiguous Devil Character for their Art and that's why they died early. It was so disrespectful. The bit about Joan of Arc made me especially angry. She was a real woman who was brutally killed, mostly for the crime of Being a Woman, and Schwab took her tragedy and tacked it into her stupid pretentious book to try and lend it credence. Come on.

I don't even know what to say about Henry. He was such a non-event. He and Addie were perfect for each other because they are both just so boring. “The darkness” (Luc) just barely flirted with being interesting, sometimes, but he never quite made it. I think the most interesting part about him would have been his becoming more like a human for this human he's falling in love with, which I've already read anyway, in a much better book series (the Winternight trilogy, if you're interested. It also has a heroine who's Not Like Other Girls but still manages to be a product of her time and place and is surrounded by Other Girls Who Are Still People).

Anyway. This book was, ironically, one of the most soulless books I've ever read. 0 out of 5 not-really-the-devils.