Book Review: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Sometimes it’s good to give an author another chance. I read one of V. E. Schwab’s books a few years ago and despite the fact that it was a story type that I normally enjoy, it just completely failed to grab me. So I figured Schwab was just not an author for me and went on with my life.

Then The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue came along, and it was getting really good reviews and sounded so interesting, and my spouse read it and enjoyed it*, so I decided to check it out too, and I have to say, I’m glad I did.

The Plot

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue features one of my favorite plot seeds: a woman doesn’t want to get married and has an adventure instead. In this case, having made it to the ripe age of 23 without being married, Adeline LaRue is being forced into marrying a local widower. Addie chafes at the idea of being thrust suddenly into a ready-made family (her erstwhile groom has several children) and flees her own wedding. In order to escape the fate set in front of her, she makes a deal with a dark god in the woods, trading her soul for immortality. She promises the god he can have her soul as soon as she feels like she’s done living.

Well, needless to say, Addie learns the first rule of making a wish: be very careful with the wording you choose. The god decides that in addition to not aging and recovering quickly from injury, Addie will not leave a mark on the world. No one remembers her, she can’t speak her own name, she can’t write or draw, even her footsteps disappear in a snowy field.

What follows is nearly three hundred years of Addie learning the limits of her blessing/curse, exploring the world, and trying to find ways to leave a mark, all while the god visits her on their anniversary to ask if she’s ready to give in yet.

Oh, did I mention that the god takes the form of the imaginary man she used to draw and fantasize about? So yeah there’s a bit of sexual tension in this long-running feud.

A plot twist arrives when Addie meets Henry, a young man who works at a used bookstore and… actually remembers her.

One of My Least Favorite Tropes

So we’ve established that I love “Girl ditches marriage for adventure” stories, but you know what I don’t love? “You’re the only one who doesn’t…” as a basis for romance. If you’ve watched True Blood** you know what I mean: Sookie is initially attracted to Bill because she can’t hear his thoughts. And don’t get me wrong, I love some peace and quiet, but I don’t think it’s something to base an entire relationship around.

To me there is nothing romantic about choosing someone by default. If someone is the only person whose thoughts you can’t hear, or who remembers you, or who doesn’t smell like old socks to your super-sensitive nose, you’re not choosing them because they make you happy, you’re choosing them because they don’t make you miserable.

Is that what you want for yourself or for your lover? Of course not. You want to be with someone because out of all the people in the world, they’re the one who makes you the happiest or is the most attractive or gives the best book recommendations. You want your lover to be with you for the same reasons.

Reading this, you won’t be surprised to learn that I also don’t believe in soulmates and I don’t like the “fated mate” trope (one reason why I don’t read a lot of shifter romances, but I digress).

To get back to the story, Henry is… fine. He likes books. He takes care of the bookstore cat, who is named Book. He has a secret that is important to the plot, but it doesn’t make him mysterious. He’s actually kind of aimless and boring, although he’s cute, and he is mostly a good friend to his friends. And the dark god, who Addie has taken to calling Luc, is awful, so this is definitely a case of “he doesn’t make her miserable.”

So I wasn’t really invested in Addie and Henry’s relationship; instead, I was invested in Addie’s happiness. Henry was Blandy McBlanderson, but finally being remembered by somebody made Addie happy, and the two of them had fun sharing their favorite places in NYC and eating good food and shelving books and snuggling with the cat. It sounds like a perfectly nice relationship even though it would have been a lot better if Henry’s black lesbian art major friend Bea had been the one who could remember Addie.

But while we’re on the subject of Bea, despite the fact that the main relationships in the book appear hetero, there’s some queer representation on the page. Both Addie and Henry are bi or pansexual, and both seem chill with that fact about the other. One of Henry’s friends is his ex-boyfriend Robbie, who is gay, and as stated above, Bea is a lesbian. No one was really explicitly trans, non-binary, or genderqueer. Addie spends some time disguising herself as a man, but it appears to be based more around the convenience/freedom/safety of being male in historic times, rather than a genuine desire to be a man or at least not a woman.

All Hail the Power of Spite

Really, what raised this book above all other books which feature a woman choosing adventure over marriage***, despite the presence of the “default option” romance, was the power of Addie’s spite.

There are many times, especially early in her immortality when she hasn’t figured out how to game the system, that Addie is almost ready to give up. What keeps her going? Not hope. Not love. Pure, wonderful spite. She can’t stand the idea of Luc winning and getting her soul before she’s darned good and done with it.

And you know what? I’m here for it. I’m here for female protagonists who are motivated by just being done with some dude’s nonsense. I’m here for women who do things just because someone said they couldn’t. I’m here for pettiness. I’m here for “don’t tell me what to do.”

I’m here for Addie LaRue.

*One of our first dates involved going to a used bookstore and finding copies of our favorite books for each other; book recommendations have remained an important part of our relationship in the ensuing years.

** This is where I admit I’ve never read the books, so I don’t know if they feature the same trope.

***Not to suggest that the two are a binary and/or mutually exclusive. I also love stories where a woman chooses marriage and then has adventures with her spouse. The main thing is woman having adventures. Sometimes, women find themselves in a world where the only way to do what you want to do is to not let some man chain you down to watch his kids all day while he farms or whatever.

About the links: All links in this article are Bookshop.org affiliate links. If you purchase a book using my link, I will get a commission and you will be supporting independent bookstores! If you do not use my links I highly encourage you to get your books from a local indie store, or your local library system (which is where I got The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue).