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

I had heard so many great things about this book and had already loved many books by this author. So when I saw this book lying in the library, I knew it would be the next book I read. I hope V.E. Schwab will continue to write books, as a couple of my all-time favourite books are hers.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is about a woman named Addie. Her parents arrange a marriage for her with an older man. Addie does not want to marry, especially not him. She prays to all the gods that she wants to be free. In the dark, one answers, and she makes a deal. Without knowing, she bargains for a free life forever, but nobody will remember her. We follow her as she finds her place in the world until three hundred years later, she meets Henry, and everything is not as it seems.

Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.

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

I couldn’t put the book down for the first 75%, but the last quarter was not for me. The ending was not what I wanted it to be. I get why the writer wrote it this way, but I would have given the book five stars if the ending was different. What I liked most about the story is that it makes a person wonder why we are here in the first place and how we want people to remember us after we are not here anymore.

“Being forgotten, she thinks, is a bit like going mad. You begin to wonder what is real, if you are real. After all, how can a thing be real if it cannot be remembered?”

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

Even with the ending I didn’t like, it will be a story unlike any other with a lot of meaning. Because of this, it was a four-star book for me.