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

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V. E. Schwab

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue Kindle Edition

by V. E. Schwab (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

49,469 ratings

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
USA TODAY BESTSELLER
NATIONAL INDIE BESTSELLER
THE WASHINGTON POST BESTSELLER

Recommended by Entertainment Weekly, Real Simple, NPR, Slate, and Oprah Magazine
#1 Library Reads Pick—October 2020
#1 Indie Next Pick—October 2020
BOOK OF THE YEAR (2020) FINALIST—Book of The Month Club

A “Best Of” Book From: Oprah Mag * CNN * Amazon * Amazon Editors * NPR * Goodreads * Bustle * PopSugar * BuzzFeed * Barnes & Noble * Kirkus Reviews * Lambda Literary * Nerdette * The Nerd Daily * Polygon * Library Reads * io9 * Smart Bitches Trashy Books * LiteraryHub * Medium * BookBub * The Mary Sue * Chicago Tribune * NY Daily News * SyFy Wire * Powells.com * Bookish * Book Riot *Library Reads Voter Favorite *

In the vein of The Time Traveler’s Wife and Life After Life, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is New York Times bestselling author V. E. Schwab’s genre-defying tour de force.

A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.

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.

Also by V. E. Schwab

Shades of Magic
A Darker Shade of Magic
A Gathering of Shadows
A Conjuring of Light

Villains
Vicious
Vengeful

At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.

Print length

434 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Tor Books
Publication date

October 6, 2020
File size

7091 KB
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Matt Haig
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V. E. Schwab
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Popular Highlights in this book

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Books, she has found, are a way to live a thousand lives—or to find strength in a very long one.
Highlighted by 5,309 Kindle readers
Stories are a way to preserve one’s self. To be remembered. And to forget.
Highlighted by 4,168 Kindle readers
That time always ends a second before you’re ready. That life is the minutes you want minus one.
Highlighted by 2,741 Kindle readers

From the Publisher

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue V. E. Schwab

Amazon.com Review

An Amazon Best Book of October 2020: In the 1700s, Addie LaRue makes a deal with the devil—she will live forever, although her immortality comes with the curse of being forgotten by everyone. Addie moves through time and across continents; she learns to survive and even leave her mark on the world. Then one day she meets a man in a bookstore who remembers her name, and suddenly everything changes. This deeply satisfying and cinematic novel rivals contemporary classic The Time Traveler’s Wife in concept and scope. —Sarah Gelman, Amazon Book Review

Review

Praise for The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue:
"For someone damned to be forgettable, Addie LaRue is a most delightfully unforgettable character, and her story is the most joyous evocation of unlikely immortality."
-- Neil Gaiman, author of American Gods and winner of multiple Nebula, Hugo, and Locus Awards

"Victoria Schwab sends you whirling through a dizzying kaleidoscopic adventure through centuries filled with love, loss, art and war -- all the while dazzling your senses with hundreds of tiny magical moments along the way. The Invisible Life of Addie Larue will enchant readers as deeply as its heroine's Faustian bargain; you will find yourself in quick turns both aching with heartbreak, and gleefully crowing at the truly delicious, wicked cleverness in store."
-- Naomi Novik, Nebula and Locus Award-winning author of Spinning Silver

"Addie Larue is a book perfectly suspended between darkness and light, myth and reality. [This novel] is--ironically--unforgettable." -- Hugo Award winner Alix E. Harrow, author of The Ten Thousand Doors of January

"The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is the kind of book you encounter only once in a lifetime. . . . A defiant, joyous rebellion against time, fate, and even death itself--and a powerful reminder that the only magic great enough to conquer all of it is love."-- Peng Shepherd, author of The Book of M

Praise for the Shades of Magic series:

"Addictive and immersive, this series is a must-read." --Entertainment Weekly, Grade A, on A Gathering of Shadows

"A gem of a tale.... This is a book to treasure." --Deborah Harkness on A Darker Shade of Magic

"Compulsively readable.... With so many worlds on the map, there's plenty left to discover."--NPR on A Darker Shade of Magic

"Feels like a priceless object, brought from another, better world of fantasy books." --io9 on A Darker Shade of Magic

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B084357H23
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Tor Books (October 6, 2020)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 6, 2020
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 7091 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 434 pages
Lending ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled

Best Sellers Rank: #1,123 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #5 in Action & Adventure Literary Fiction
- #8 in Historical Fantasy (Kindle Store)
- #11 in Historical Fantasy (Books)

Customer Reviews:
49,469 ratings

About the author

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V. E. Schwab

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VICTORIA “V. E.” SCHWAB is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of more than twenty books, including the acclaimed Shades of Magic series, the Villains series, the Cassidy Blake series and the international bestseller The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue. Her work has received critical acclaim, translated into over two dozen languages, and optioned for television and film. First Kill – a YA vampire series based on Schwab’s short story of the same name – is currently in the works at Netflix with Emma Roberts’ Belletrist Productions producing. When she's not haunting Paris streets or trudging up English hillsides, she lives in Edinburgh, Scotland, and is usually tucked in the corner of a coffee shop, dreaming up monsters.

Customer reviews

5 star		67%
4 star		22%
3 star		8%
2 star		2%
1 star		1%

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Top reviews from the United States

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Katie

Hollow

Reviewed in the United States on October 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

Have you ever gone to a tourist trap, thinking “I’m finally going to see this place”, only to get there a find out that there’s really nothing to see? You get there, you look over a guardrail at the place you thought you’d be able to explore and experience, only to find that you can only look at it from a distance, and then there’s nothing else to do but get back in your car and go home.
That is the emotional equivalent of reading The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.
I am so very disappointed in this book. I was so stoked about the premise, and I thought it’d be dark and gritty and cool and we’d get a complex plot with a sprinkle of a love story.
But, instead, it was a 300 year slog through the endless emotional cycle of regret and loneliness of a 300 year old girl, her emotionally manipulative demon lover, and her clinically depressed, unbearably boring boyfriend. I could not get through it fast enough.
This entire book feels like a missed opportunity. Instead of going from beginning to end, letting time and consequence shape this character, we skate over the tiny detail of our Addie’s immortality by jumping back and forth along the timeline. And I know Victoria Schwab loooves jumping timelines. It’s her jam, and that’s fine, when it’s done well and with purpose. In this book, they’re literally spoilers, even going as far as using the phrase, “Later, she will learn...” Oh, good, then there’s no point in telling this story? Great. Glad I’m here. The timeline jumps not only ruin any tension in the story due to their poor timing, they serve as a mere acknowledgement of the passing of time, and gives us a rushed, topical rundown of the historical events the character has lived through that, while they shape the entire foundation of the world Addie lives in, don’t seem to affect her at all.
The other problem is Addie. She is a miserable, honestly pretty whiny, weirdly stubborn character from start to finish, and the author really grinds that misery in at every opportunity. It’s hard to follow her around and not be bored with her, “I’m lonely and sad all the time, but I’m also pointlessly stubborn about staying that way” narrative.
I could go on, but I’ll just say, I’m disappointed and I wanted it to be better.

1,497 people found this helpful

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gonewalkabout

Monotonous

Reviewed in the United States on October 20, 2020

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Dragging pace and repetitive, I feel like I’ve been reading this book for 300 years— and I haven’t quite struggled to the halfway point! Add an immature protagonist who never seems to learn anything or grow spiritually and a few lackluster love interests and you have the recipe for a boring, go nowhere read that leaves you scratching your head. It is very rare for me to give up on a book, but when you find yourself rooting for the devil to end the misery of continuing the story, it’s time to slam the cover closed!

659 people found this helpful

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jin662

Invisible interest

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2020

Verified Purchase

I bought this book based on the blurb. I bought this book because I fell victim to the hype. Am I now sad I paid full price for this instead of waiting it to roll through on a kindle daily deals email ? Yes.
I get that the premise was supposed to show how invisible Addie wasn’t. I understand truly that the way chapters skipped from past to present and sideways should have been soothing and easy. None of this was the case. I found the title character somewhat annoying, I found the skipping between past and present jarring and not at all well done.
I wanted to love this book and for the first 32% of it I tried. I really tried. The hype you know? But I just couldn’t. I slogged my way through the remainder wishing every time I opened it that it would get better and it just didn’t.
I am sure there will be others and indeed there have been others who enjoy this book. It just dragged on and on for me from lackluster beginning to dissatisfying end.

462 people found this helpful

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Aleshia Huber (Mad Scibrarian)

Much more complex than a romance between a human and a devil

Reviewed in the United States on October 6, 2020

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In an act of desperation, Addie LaRue makes a deal with a devil to live forever but in exchange no one will ever remember her. She then learns the loneliness that is a life where everyone forgets you. It's not until 300 years later that she does meet someone who actually remembers her, a 28 year old man named Henry.

This is a very slow-paced novel. Ms. Schwab takes her time to fully introduce Addie so you can understand her character-- why Addie makes a deal in the first place. She then takes her time to allow you to feel what Addie feels-- the unrelenting loneliness and what it means to live for 300 years. I found myself overtime emphasizing Addie's burden, and was happy when she finally meets Henry. I couldn't help but ship them together in hopes of a sweet romance with a happy ending. Then there is the mystery of why Henry can remember her-- why does a man 300 years from Addie's original life have this ability? Is it fate that they met? The technique that Ms. Schwab uses to slowly reveal all the mysteries is by alternating chapters between the past to present, which in this case is the year 2014. I've always wanted a good story involving both past and present point-of-views to show how a past from long ago affects the present, and the order of everything told here helped me understand Addie's motivations, feelings, and responses. I really appreciated the execution.

I believe I heard this novel pitched as a hate to love romance between a human and a devil. I would like to clarify that it is much more complex than that. The devil character himself is never necessarily referred to as such, and he is a very dark character that you'll meet through Addie's past. He is dangerous and not to be taken lightly.

I'm very happy that I read this book. I've read a few of Ms. Schwab's other novels and while the pitch behind them have been amazing, the execution has been a little flat for me personally. Ms. Schwab has really grown as a writer with this one however, and I will definitely continue to pick up her books.

356 people found this helpful

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Top reviews from other countries

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Anamelia Regan (EldritchFae)

Such a beautiful and emotive book

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on October 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book was absolutely incredible. I am a fan of Schwab’s other work, so I was extremely excited about ‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’, especially as Schwab has talked on multiple occasions about it being a book that really means a lot to her. I went in with high expectations and yet somehow it exceeded every one of them. I absolutely adored every moment of this book - it took me through such a range of emotions and utterly broke my heart. It kept me guessing until the end, as I never truly knew exactly what was going to happen next, despite my constant guessing. This book is beautiful, the characters are incredible and this is definitely one of the most compelling books I have ever read.

This is a very character driven book, and Addie as a character is wonderful, because she is flawed. She spends her life forgotten, and so she has picked up a lot of bad habits in order to survive. I really liked the fact that Addie is not perfect, because she is a reflection of human existence. She has gone through so much and yet never loses her love for art, or for life. She has goes through the best and worst of human existence, and still finds joy in the world. She finds something new, and I feel like we all need a bit of Addie in our lives to remind us that joy can be found in the strangest of places. There are so many incredible characters in this book, predominately Henry the person who remembers her and Luc, the devil who cursed her. But each person that Addie meets adds a new layer to the story, and a new outlook and insight into this world. Each chapter was a new exploration, a new idea, explored through encounters with the people surrounding Addie.

The plot seems like a simple ‘person sold their soul to the devil to live forever’ kind of story, but it is so much more than that. There is so much to this book, but it is best left discovered in your own time. This book starts slow, in that it slowly pulls you into its rhythm, flipping backwards and forwards in time between events that all build upon each other. This creates the feeling that it’s weaving you into the story, dropping hints here and there until you’re so caught up in what will happen next that you can’t think of much else and don’t want to stop reading. This is definitely a book that will stay with me for a long time, and keeps haunting my thoughts.

‘The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue’ is thought provoking, and brings up a lot of thoughts about the nature of existence and what it means to live. Can we really live without making a mark on the world, or is it the impression we have on others that makes us real? I wasn’t expecting this book to raise a lot of philosophical questions, and make me rethink the nature of existence, relationship with art and the meaning of life but it did! It made me think a lot about my own insecurities about life, being forgotten and the nature of art and reality. I’m sure a lot of readers won’t be quite so plagued by these thoughts but they were such an important part of the book in my opinion and they have left an impression on me in the most interesting way! There’s also such a focus on art in the book, which ties the whole thing together in such a wonderful way. There was such a love of art that came across in the pages, it felt like a love letter to creativity at times, which I found really inspiring.

Overall, I absolutely adored this book. It was beautiful, lyrical, incredibly written and haunting. It took me through such a range of emotions, and left me wanting more. The characters were fantastic, the story was gripping and it lived up to and then exceeded every one of my hopes. Schwab is a master storyteller and this is her best book to date. This book is special, fully of joy and I hope everyone who reads it loves it as much as I do.

51 people found this helpful

Heloisa M

Livro lindo, em estado perfeito, história incrível!

Reviewed in Brazil on November 19, 2020

Verified Purchase

Vale muitoo a pena, essa edição é linda, capa aveludada e com toques metálicos e a escrita da V.E. Schwab é contagiante, recomendo demais!

65 people found this helpful

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Samantha VB

Read with tissues!

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 17, 2020

Verified Purchase

This book has been three days of emotional turmoil for me. I've loved it, I've hated it, I've been excited by it, furious at it, bored stiff and completely captivated! And finally, utterly and totally heartbroken.

(A quick side note about the very poor editing. So many words missing, or extra words that I noticed. And continuity errors! Just one example is that she drapes her coat over a kitchen chair, but later mentions that there are no kitchen chairs! Also, at one point she's talking with someone in the kitchen, then in the next sentence she stands from the bed??? It drove me mad!!!)

I love Addie LaRue. I am awestruck at the resilience and strength she has. If I were her, I'd have surrendered my soul to the devil on the first night is Paris. She has a hunger to live and be free that is intoxicating. And she's not the only character that I loved. Even the fleeting ones were deep and lovable.

The writing is so beautiful. I love Schwab's style! She pulls you into the scene and it's so easy to feel everything the characters are feeling. It's an emersive experience.

Plot is where the book stumbles a little for me. The main plot, Addie making a deal with a God for her soul and the other main plot points (which I won't spoil), is wonderful!!! I loved every second. But there were far, far too many bits in between. I think this book could have been at least 100 pages shorter and you'd still get the entire experience without the parts that drag and make you wonder why everyone is saying such wonderful things about this book!!

But you get past those parts, the main plot takes over and... I shattered. I completely shattered, I'm still crying, I may be crying for a while. It's absolutely devistating and yet stunningly beautiful. I will, happily, read this book again in a few year and still cry my eyes out! At least the second time I'll know to have tissues at the ready!

I have a couple more of the authors books on my shelf, unread, and I'm really looking forward to them now!

26 people found this helpful

Sneha

Pick your words wisely!

Reviewed in India on January 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

The invisible life of Addie LaRue

In the recent years when I've learnt the art of reading without a physical book, I've earned the perk of highlighting and bookmarking pages without soiling them; a way to get back to the the crux and relish. Addie, unfortunately is the book I've highlighted way too much and a revisit would equal a reread (gladly) !

The story of a girl, who lived in a small town and wanted freedom. Her wish was granted, but only at a cost. She will live from moment to moment without belonging to a single one! Freedom comes when there's no belonging, no memory; even to your own name. She belongs to noone and nowhere and is remembered by none. Except, one fine day she meets someone who she thinks is enough, because maybe he remembers...

Do we ever know what we really want and yet how stubborn can we get? Are we prepared to pay its price? Can something that we thought would be a miracle turn into a lifetime of mistake? But then, can two mistakes create a miracle again? Can the universe ever err? And in the end, is there an escape door to deals?

We use words so loosely that they lose meaning. The journey of a lifetime could change by using seemingly harmless words in the most harmful places! A beautiful word play and a storehouse of personifications! If anything, pick up this book to bask in the beauty of every word coming alive! A story worth a savour!

38 people found this helpful

Laura McToal

A Good Read but not quite worth the Hype

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 21, 2021

Verified Purchase

In 1700’s France, Addie makes a desperate deal with the Devil. She wants to belong to herself and no one else, to have a life forever. So the devil gives her eternal life in exchange for her soul. But, everyone Addie meets instantly forgets her as soon as she leaves the room.

Until one day, someone remembers her.

This book has been hyped all over Bookstagram. Whilst I did enjoy it. I do not think it is equal to the hype. Whilst loads of people say they cried at the end, I was indifferent.

12 people found this helpful

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