The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

By V. E. Schwab

🩵🩵🩵🩵🩶.🤯🤯

[E]ach turn of the tables in Henry and Addie's life together were well executed, enjoyable to read, exciting to anticipate, and surprising to realize.

Wow. A truly beautifully told story of a complexly lived life. A central idea so easily empathized: wanting more time to live life our own way.

"...this is a silence born of strategy. This is the silence of a chess game being played, and this time, Addie has to win."

The desperation felt by young Addie when she pleads to the gods for a different life, of freedom, of more time is the same despair so many people feel as they go through the turbulent path of young adulthood. As a young adult myself, Addie's feelings of being behind and ahead and just not on the right path, the fear of not being remembered or leaving a mark or creating a worthy legacy was consuming and familiar. Schwab does a fantastic job of showing us the many lives Addie lived, her imagery transports you all around the world and across time. The built in antithesis that is Henry is surprising and yet makes so much sense, the two halves of a whole: a girl who can never be remembered or make a mark, and a boy who can never do wrong or be disliked, both just wanting to be seen and loved.

"He is full of roots, while she is only branches."

As their story widened and Henry became more contextualized, that idea that she wanted to slow down and he wanted to live fast became more clear and understandable. I personally really enjoyed both the pacing and the layout of the storytelling: the fact that we read the story in the same order (presumably) that Addie dictates them to Henry for his book is not only a cute sprinkle at the end, but also a beautiful way to frame each new development in the present time without giving away too much too early.

"...this is a new kind of silence: the silent aftermath of storms, the damage not yet tallied."

There was an allusion to the secret keeping capabilities of time, which also grounded you in the fact that the present was currently happening and we couldn't know more about the past until she (Schwab and Addie) decided to share more.

The recurring motif of returning to the anniversary of Addie's deal multiple times throughout the past was a great way of steadying the reader against so many time jumps back and forth, and I especially like it because it was always right around my birthday 😊.

"Here is a new kind of silence, rarer than the rest. The easy quiet of familiar spaces, of places that fill simply because you are not alone within them."

With so much life to be told it's inevitable to get a couple nuggets of good quotes and advice, but man does V. E. drop them like acorns!I could say so much about the symbolism used throughout the story, the freckles the art pieces, the parts of the book, the rules of the curse, the duality of the Stranger, ugh so much! But I'll spare you the spoil.

"The only way Addie knows how to keep going, is to keep going forward. They are Orpheus, she is Euridice and every time they tun back, she is ruined."

There were a couple of times when I could predict the next events, but the plot twists that came with each season of Addie's old life, and each turn of the tables in Henry and Addie's life together were well executed, enjoyable to read, exciting to anticipate, and surprising to realize. If I read this as a paperback, the margins would be FULL and I would read it over again so many times the pages would wear thin.

Audiobook - 17h 10m

Read: 6.10.24 - 6.25.24