Reviews with content warning for Drug abuse - The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

The first 75% of this book felt very slow and a bit dull to me. However, I did really enjoyed the ending. The last 10% was emotional in all the best ways and had some lovely snippets of poetic prose.

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jackyy93's review against another edition

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mysterious reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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saturnpersonified's review against another edition

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dark emotional inspiring sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.75

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msradiosilence's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny hopeful mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

TLDR; 4.5 rating rounded up, I love monkey’s paw wishes, I love queer women, and I’m not gonna lie this book almost had me crying.

Full review to come. :)

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kaziaroo's review against another edition

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emotional reflective sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

I liked the beginning, and the very end, but the middle not so much. While it's not my usual kind of book, and I have no patience for this kind of "lyrical prose" and over-romanticisation of everything, I was intrigued by Addie's situation and the bitter sadness of her not being remembered by everything. I struggled with some of the plausibility of it; that she would really be so desperate to avoid a quiet, comfortable marriage that she would make a deal with a strange eldritch being, and that she would never stray beyond Western Europe and the USA in her 300 years. Her relationship with the demon that cursed her was interesting, and so were the ways in which she learned to cope with and manoeuvre within her curse. I did find it tedious reading about her endless one-sided one-night stands, but I was willing to push through that.

But then Henry appeared. I honestly think I would have enjoyed the book more if I'd just skipped Henry's chapters. The story would have mostly made sense without them and I would have those hours of my life back. Although I related to some of his struggles with choosing his career path and specialism, and his situation is also sad, Henry's chapters were just boring. He mopes around all day and whenever he feels a little worse he just downs a mixture of drugs with gay abandon and no consequences the next day. His and Addie's "love" was totally unconvincing; compared to the other lovers we see her meet, Henry is by far the most dull and she only likes him so much because he remembers her. She becomes the only interesting thing about him.

I wish the book had either explored the world and history a bit more or been a couple of hundred pages shorter. I had no interest in watching Addie and Henry having nice days out and going to endless bars and clubs, or sleeping with everyone they meet. The flowery writing desperately tried to make me fall in love with the characters and settings, but it was all style over substance. My overall feeling about this book is disappointment after the hype.

I would recommend this to fans of Matt Haig's "How to Stop Time" and who want nice, deep-sounding quotes to put in their Instagram captions.

TL;DR: it was well executed for what it was but the writing was flowery, the male lead boring, the female lead unadventurous, and there was too much sex, drugs and rock & roll for my tastes.

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