This one surprised me. I found myself invested in the main characters' journey throughout this magical and thought-provoking story. The writing had a lyrical rhythm to it and I found myself circling back to a few sentences just to have them linger in my mind a while longer.
Whether it was the writing itself or the theme of living an invisible life that captivated me, I don't know for sure., but each resonated in its own way.
Similar to other reviews, I found myself so engrossed in the present-day story, that there was one flashback chapter I rushed through toward the end that felt unnecessary. The story also took a while to find its proper pacing. Oddly, I also felt the first few pages were a rough go that failed to capture the amazing writing to follow.
Case in point, line 8 page 1: "It isn't his fault-it is never their faults." Please change this clunky sentence! I truly cringed. There were a few other grammatical errors I found on the Kindle version with a few word omissions that will presumably be caught during final editing before release.
This is a very memorable read and one of the first advanced copies I'm excited to see published. Thank you kindly for the opportunity to review and for not passing me by as though I were invisible! I give this one a solid 4 to 5-star review.

This book is simply phenomenal. It takes you on such a journey and leaves you wanting more the whole time. I was intrigued by Addie’s life story and couldn’t put it down.

A very high 4 stars!
This novel is an allegorical commentary on humanity and the intricacies of what it means to be human. The overall timeline, which is not written chronologically, was executed very well, as well as the use of various works of art to act as a subheading for each section. The reading was enjoyable; it as a bit slow at first. Schwab did an amazing job of braiding together these narratives both within a historical context and in terms of perspective. The writing style also was on point. There were chapters which included these short, staccato almost lists which reflects on the fragility of humanity, and then there were other moments that were languid and flowing which reflects upon the existence, or lack, of time.
I thoroughly enjoyed reading this novel (I kind of want to go back a reread with notes and analyze the text, but that is just the language arts teacher in me) !!!

Let me begin by saying VE Schwab is one of my favorite authors, the only author I've met in person, and probably the author of the most books on my bookshelf. I love how she refuses to shy away from the dark and messy parts of humans and stories, especially in Vicious/Vengeful, the ADSOM series, and The Monsters of Verity. I can see how much V's writing has improved with each book she publishes, and since this story was her most personal and her brainchild for over a decade, I was incredibly excited to read perhaps the best book she's published. Everyone I knew who had ARCs was raving about how this book was life-changing.

Maybe my expectations were a little too high.

Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this book, but I personally would not call it V's best. I guess my point here is if you have some of the same annoyances I'm about to describe, don't give up on her books because you'll probably find another series or book that speaks to you more!

Addie and I got off to a rough start. I've grown used to Schwab's writing style, which is highly stylistic, full of vivid imagery, dotted with purposeful repetition, and punctuated with abrupt interjections that interrupt the dreamlike quality of the prose to great dramatic effect.

Like this.

And while this style usually works well for her novels, I felt like this book took a good 100+ pages for the drama of the story to catch up to the drama of the writing style. I felt like the prose was needlessly dramatic as it described Addie's existence as a twenty-something in modern day New York, a decidedly un-dreamlike setting. The writing is the kind that makes you catch your breath, but in large doses it really does feel like you're gasping. Either the writing style was reigned in or I got used to it, but by the second half of the book I didn't notice it as much. It probably helped that the fantastical and suspenseful elements of the plot were in full force by then, justifying the highly stylistic prose.

My other annoyance with this book is how Very White it was considering the premise. This book did have queer representation and I appreciated that. Considering that Addie is a self-proclaimed traveler who has had 200+ years to explore the world, though, I was disappointed that the only mention of a non-European culture was passing mention of her love of Moroccan food. If Addie wasn't a wanderer and the devil she bargained with was a spirit or creature specifically from Western European folklore, I wouldn't be so annoyed since global cultures would be outside the scope of the story. However, neither of these was the case.

Addie speaks 9 languages, almost all of them from Western Europe, and among them German and Swiss. For those who don't know, Switzerland's four national languages are German, French, Italian, and Romansh, and while Swiss German is distinct from German, it is a dialect and not its own language. Why couldn't this German dialect have been replaced with Polish, or Turkish, or Chinese? Perhaps China was too far for Addie to travel in the 1800s, but surely she could have made her way to Eastern Europe? This is a mild spoiler, so feel free to skip until the bold sentence if you'd like to avoid it: At one point, the "devil" Luc teleports Addie from her home in France to Italy in order to surround her with the unfamiliar and break her. Again, why couldn't Luc have taken her out of Western Europe if the goal was to take her somewhere unfamiliar? Do ancient shadowy chaos gods not have jurisdiction outside of Western Europe and America? These were such easy ways to include more cultures in this book without changing the spirit of the story, and V chose not to take them.

I've spent a long time on what I found disappointing in this book, so I will also spend a long time on what I loved about it. I thought the premise of being forgotten in exchange for living forever was really interesting, and I loved that even though we knew everyone Addie interacted with would forget her once they looked away, we still ached and hoped for it not to be true. There were so many small heartbreaks as yet another character would inevitably forget Addie and she'd be forced to move on. Still, Addie has so many friendships, relationships, and meaningful experiences despite not having days or years to get to know other people.

One really cool aspect of this book is that it is told in isolated incidents over time, and even though the timeline is highly nonlinear, you don't need to stretch your brain to piece things together. I thought the way the chapters were organized was really well done, because it heightened the suspense and developed the atmosphere in a nuanced and layered way as stories from different times dovetailed together.

I also really loved Addie's evolving relationship with Luc. She makes a naive deal for freedom, and he does his best to break her and get her to surrender, but Addie is clever and defiant. She endures horrific situations, and each time Luc comes back to ask her if she's given up, she refuses. Despite her refusal to surrender, Luc is the only one who remembers her over time and knows what she is going through. At the same time, Addie is one of the few constants in Luc's existence...can your enemy become your friend and confidante? Can you love your enemy or are you just seeking false comfort? One thing that surprised me is that this isn't really a love story between a French girl and a devil even though it's marketed that way, so just a heads up if that's what you're expecting. It's more of a complicated rivalry where two foes are circling each other and you don't know if they're about to dance together or stab one another. Theirs is a particular form of toxic relationship, and I like that the abuse was never romanticized.

I thought it was really cool to see how Addie manages to find ways to leave her mark on the world, even if it is only indirectly. The concepts of ideas being bigger than people and art transcending memory were beautiful. I'm excited to see the finished copy of this book so that I can see the sketches that were only described in text in the eARC.

I thought this book had a fantastic and fitting ending. If the ending hadn't been so satisfying, I probably would have knocked off another star in my rating. I'm not talking about the meta stuff towards the end of the book, I can't decide if that part was fitting or too gimmicky. The last few pages though, those were truly incredible.

A free eARC was provided by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

if you came here for a love story between a girl and the darkness she made a deal with, don’t even bother. i think that the story was actually pretty good but it wasn’t what it was advertised as. i thought this story would be about a girl falling in love with the devil and it wasn’t at all, which is fine but when you have so many people hyped up because we think we’re going to get the villain and the protagonist in love but you don’t write that i feel like it’s kind of cheap.

it was a love triangle and it was quite pointless. it was like she needed one thing to help push the story along so she just came up with a whole person and made them the love interest. but i don’t think her being in love with him was very believable at all.

i think that V.E. Schwab has a habit of writing her female characters to be “not like other girls” and i was hoping that it wouldn’t be the same but sadly it was. i think that she tends to self insert with her characters when it comes to that aspect and you can very much tell. someone please tell her it’s okay to be girly and that being “different” and not into what makes you feminine doesn’t make you special, it feels very put downish.

i wanted to like this book so much because her writing was better than it typically is and i liked a lot of the quotes a lot and i liked the fact that we learned why Addie wanted to live forever and saw people forgetting about her. even how some chapters were in present day and the next was in the past.

but i just feel bamboozled like why advertise it as something it clearly isn’t? like i said the book is good and i can understand why people would love it, i just feel like, don’t make the book out to be something that it isn’t because for people who came for the romance are going to be very disappointed and speaking of the romance, i feel like the romance in general was poo poo. i don’t think that Schwab is good at writing romance at all.

i hated nothing more the corny ass ending too, i don’t mind ambiguous endings but this one was just so bad, it’s something i would’ve wrote in my 5th grade fictional books i used to do for class.

It's a long book, but it goes by fast. Addie`s story is sad, but so full of adventure and bravery and hope. It's a vast, epic story, spanning centuries and crossing oceans. Addie is living under a curse, but she's incredibly resourceful and pushes against it and finds ways to enjoy all the time and freedom that she gains in a terrible deal that she makes with a god of darkness.

Wow this book is amazing!

You know how you hit a chapter in a book and it just overwhelms you with how it's set up, and then you can't put the book down after? That's what happens here.

It has great twists and a great setup. It's emotional. It all makes sense.

This book is definitely one to check out.

This might be Schwab's best book yet.

It's so hard to write a review for this without giving away spoilers.

It was so, so, so, good and lovely and a little heartbreaking and weirdly completely hopeful.

The voice drew me in immediately and kept me reading, even though they were a couple of slow spots in the beginning. I didn't mind them much because the writing was so lovely. There were several times I was really captivated by the prose. Scwab's writing is on point for this book.

And that midpoint twist. Ugh. I knew something was up, but I didn't know it was gonna be that.

This is lyrical and lush and at it's core it a romantic love story, but there also themes of what it means to belong to someone, not romantically, but the people in our lives--family and friends--and what happens when a desperate girl makes a bargain to belong to no one.

It's better to go in not knowing a whole lot and be pleasantly surprised.

I can't wait to buy this when it comes out in October.

And there needs to be a sequel. There is room for one, and I really need one. I need to know what Addie does next.

he Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one of the most wonderful, thought-provoking and heartbreaking books I have ever read, I am fully in love with it, and still processing my absolute race through what has immediately become one of my all-time favourites. It is no secret that I love most of what V. E. Schwab has written, but The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is in a whole other class from Vengeful and A Conjuring of Light again. The prose is beautiful and immersive, full of haunting quotes such as these:

“She has the sense that they would have been friends. If he’d remembered. She tries not to think about that – she swears sometimes her memory runs forward as well as back, unspooling to show the roads she’ll never get to travel.”

“Time – how often has she heard it described as sand within a glass, steady, constant. But that is a lie, because she can feel it quicken, crashing toward her.”

This is a character-driven story, focused on Addie and her life through the centuries. Born in France in the 1700s, she was afraid of living a life that was not her own and ended up making a deal with a mysterious creature, bargaining away more than she thought. While her life was her own for as long as she wanted it, no one would remember her. Not her family, not landlords or store clerks, and certainly not the people she slept with. Until she meets Henry, a bookseller, who seems to remember her when she steals a book from his store – oops.

Through these two characters, V.E. Schwab manages to explore nuances of loneliness in human society in a poignant way, re-evaluating what it means to be seen and remembered, and how it affects the way we perceive ourselves and move through life. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a slow story, taking its time to explore the repercussions of events and the impact of small moments on the characters more than most books we tend to review on here. But that doesn’t mean it is any less compelling and dark – you have your looming antagonist, your morally grey characters and your world working against the heroes.

I do think this is one of those books that have a kind of universal appeal, that people who only read the bitterest of Grimdark will find something in just as much as people who don’t really read any fantasy at all. The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a very special book about what it means to be human and to grow.

Thank you to TorBooks for blessing me with an early copy of this book. Seriously, I don't even know where my brain is right now because this book left me absolutely speechless.

I am writing this review mere-minutes after finish it, so I apologize for anything that doesn't.. make sense. Honestly this book makes no-sense and also makes complete sense, so that's probably about what this review will make as well LOL

Schwab is a chameleon when it comes to her writing style. She has written adult fantasy, where you have the quick tongue and the epic fight scenes, and she has written young adult fantasy, where the angst is real. With this book... I feel like it stands completely on its own. Out of all of her work, I would say it is closest to Vicious, purely because of the morally-grey line her characters dance on. This feels a lot more lyrical and lovely and haunting. But, how else would a book about making a deal with the devil sound?

I don't think I will say too much about the content of this book because I feel like it is so much better to go in blind with this one. That's right kids : me, the queen of wanting to be spoiled, wants you to go into this book knowing only one thing : that I absolutely loved this book with my whole heart.

You see a lot of different snips of her life (she has lived around 300 years) and you see the many struggles she has had to go through. It isn't all pretty and elite life when you live forever and no one remembers you. She can't even say her own known or leave a mark... that means no job, no place to put her things, no things to even have, and no people to call her own. I feel like her drive to keep going is to prove that she can and those who doubt her don't know her well enough.

The writing style is very different than Schwab's normal, but at the same time it is such a Schwab way of writing (there I am again with the complete sense but no sense at all type of reviewing... gah). I can feel a little of Gaiman in the writing of this book, which is totally beautiful. If you like the writing style of The Night Circus or the detailed-writing of When Dreams Descend, you are going to eat this book right up.

It took me a few WEEKS to get through the first 30% of this book (it's hard for me to read physical books these days with my health), and it took me literally 3 hours to get through the last 70% (apparently I was having a better health day today with some extra time on the side). If that doesn't tell you how much this book suddenly grabs you out of nowhere, I don't know what will. I was at the point I had it on my tripod, eagerly waiting to swipe to the next page even though I lost the strength to hold my kindle.

And that's about what I got. I loved it, go in blind, and enjoy this crazy ride about a girl who lives forever yet no one remembers.

P.S. : yes, the Schwab-cinnamon-roll-boy is in this book and he is perfection and that is all.

Father teaches her to be a dreamer, mother teaches her to be wife, Estele teaches how to speak to gods

A young woman being forced into marriage makes a desperate plea to get help that lasts a lifetime.
She is now someone noone remembers, she cant write down her story.
She lives through the inventions of trains, lights, photography, phones, airplanes, computers, and the best of inventions= movies! 300 years of wandering and being forgotten - three words...He remembers Her!

Descriptive writing made me feel the story as I read.

Lyrical prose and intentional storytelling make for a clever, exquisite read. Unforgettable characters and dangerous deals might reveal more about the reader’s assumptions than the characters’ quandaries.

This book is a wonderful meditation on what makes us human — the importance of love and making a lasting impact.

okay wow i loved this book. i have been SO excited to read this and it truly was beautiful and unlike anything else i've ever read. i loved the structure of the book - how each chapter was set in a different year/place in addie/henry's life. i loved addie and henry so much.

it's definitely a slow paced book with stunning writing. this is my favourite ve schwab book in terms of the writing style. SO many good quotes.

thank you TOR for sending me an early digital copy for review <3

I enjoyed this book a lot. It is well written. I've never read anything by V.E. Schwab before this., but I may try another. I'm not normally a fan of the fantasy genre. However, this was enjoyable. It was a little bit on the "chick-Lit" side, but most of the time that didn't bother me.
I recommend this book if you are a fan of Audrey Niffennegger or Erin Morganstern.

Unlike all the characters in this book, I suspect Addie LaRue will linger in my mind for years and years. This is an extremely interesting take on the devils’ bargain trope and I was equally taken with the clever explorations of what love is and the human need to leave a mark on the world. While this is perhaps in places a bit long or a bit slow, it’s also dreamy and inventive, and I’d highly recommend curling up with it on a rainy day.

THIS BOOK WAS AMAZING!!! No one can remember who Addie is when she leaves that person even for a second. They would forget who she is and it has been happening for over 300 years. But everything changes when a man remembers her name. This was such an enjoyable and one of my favorite reads of this year. I loved the author's writing and the unique story of this book. The author added povs of Addie during the current time and from her past so you know more about her. The pacing was perfect for this book and it was hard to put down. I was hooked from chapter 1 and I knew this was a perfect read for me.

I loved the main character Addie, Henry and the antagonist, Luc. Addie is a brave character after she made a bargain with Luc which she is not going to let him win also for struggling a lot throughout her life because no one remembers her and she can't have anything. I loved her character and how fun of a character she was. Luc reminds me of The Darkling from the Grishaverse and he is one of my favorite antagonists. These characters said memorable quotes and made memorable scenes that you don't want to miss.

This was such an amazing read and is recommended for sure. "I remember you" is one of the great quotes from this book. Everything was perfect with this book and I had no problems with it. I haven't read any of VE. Schwab books from the past but will now after reading this book.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab is a well woven story-line exploring the implications of what happens when you make a deal with a god who only cares about gaining possession of your soul. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction and every deal has two sides. Schwab masterfully balances the story between both sides of the deal as our leading lady must find a way to deal with the repercussions and benefits of calling on the old gods after dark. The characters in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue are multifaceted and well thought out; even the villian shows a side that risks you feeling sympathetic for him. Recommended for readers who enjoyed the dichotomy of death in The Book Thief or the struggle of belonging from The Time Traveler's Wife.

V.E. Schwab's The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is one of the best versions of the Faustian bargain I've read. Her protagonist, Addie LaRue, makes a deal with the devil in 17th century France in order to escape a marriage that would prevent her from exploring the wider world. What follows is a journey through centuries, countries, and world events led by Addie as she struggles with the terms of her bargain--that she is forgotten as soon as she is out of sight, but that her imperfect life will last as long as she wishes. The book is too long. It's under-edited. There are occasional inconsistencies to drive forward the narrative, to prevent Addie from being forgotten too quickly. (This is a world where people almost never leave the room to go to the bathroom or get a drink or text on their cellphone or smoke a cigarette.) However, I did find large chunks of the novel compelling and the flaws do little to take away from Schwab's accomplishment in successfully spanning more than three centuries and a half dozen countries and in a heartbreaking third-act twist. Did I love Addie LaRue? No. But I think that many, many readers will find exactly what they're looking for in it.

This book is flawless. It's so flawless that I'm having trouble organizing my thoughts on it, and need more time to do so. I'll be posting a review to Goodreads and to the Fictionist site soon, but in the meantime... read this book. And preorder. And request fro your library.