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A review by thewomancalledsun
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab
2.0
READ TO THE END!!!!
ALL I WANT IS A BOOK WITH A WONDERFUL BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE PROTAGONIST.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a book that I believed would top my greatest books of all time list. I expected to read a book about Adeline LaRue and her life, and her deal, and how she fell in love with the darkness itself. But instead what I got was a whole lot of crushing disappointment.
ADELINE & LUC
So let's begin with our main character Adeline. For someone who's supposedly lived for 300 years she is surprisingly naive, and you would think that in 300 years you would gain a lot of wisdom and knowledge on life, and love, and the nuances and complexities of love and human emotion and the universe itself. But apparently Adeline LaRue spent 300 years just doing f****** horseshit because she has no understanding of the complexities of the world that reflects 300 years of living and she has this painful to read mentality that the world is black and white. And honestly few things piss me off more than this mentality, in real life and in books. Because life as we know it is not black and white, it's full of technicolor and grey area. And you'd think that after living 300 years and seeing centuries of life and new inventions and technology and all these great and amazing things and bearing witness to the ficklety of human emotion compared to the vastness of the future; you'd THINK that you would understand that but apparently she's could not. How she viewed Luc ( the darkness) frustrated me to no end. Because Luc through her eyes is portrayed as the villain of the story and yet all his villainous acts are simply him doing his job. Because if you make a deal with the devil, and you sell your soul, and he comes to collect, YOU CAN'T TURN AROUND PAINT HIM AS EVIL BECAUSE YOU WILLINGLY SOLD YOUR SOUL TO HIM. The only other villainous act you could possibly point out was his deal with Adeline. But even that is a stretch because sorry to say (not really) it was completely her fault because she had no idea what she wanted when she called on Luc and it makes no sense to me how you can try and call on some unknown being to fulfill a wish when you don't even know what your wish is. Honestly, I fell in love with Luc and it's depressing because the author did him a great disservice. We never got to really know anything about Luc, we never got to understand his motivations, we never got to see anything from his point of view, we never got to understand his internal dialogue, we never understood why he did what he did we never understood how he looked the world and how he perceived the world, and most importantly, how he perceived Adeline.
V. E. Shwab had a wonderful chance to build a complex and interesting and nuanced character in Luc but she instead did a great disservice to him and greater disservice to the book.
HENRY
Even when I still had hope the book would be everything I wanted to be, I still didn't like Henry. He just didn't really matter to me in the grand scheme of things, because my mentality at the time was that I'm reading a book where the main character has been alive for 300 years and the other main character is a being who has been alive for as long as the world has existed.
Therefore, I just didn't see the need to invest in the character.
We never get to see Henry's motivations and how he related to his friends and his family and to the world. His mental health struggles and anxiety, were things that were never really explained or dealt with. What exactly drove some of his mental health issues, is a question that is never asked or answered but should have been both asked and answered. I never really got attached to Henry because I didn't understand his purpose in the story. His romance and love story with Adeline was unbelievable to me and I quite frankly didn't buy it. And frankly, I wanted him and Adeline to be friends because she
had had love we had seen her with love. But never friendship. And honestly? I think that would have been beautiful.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a book that promised me my long awaited love story with the devil. And it did not deliver. And not only did the romance disappoint but my protagonist with as gorgeous a name as Adeline disappointed as well. V. E. Shwab had the opportunity to create a masterpiece to capture my heart and give us a romance like none we've read before. Give us a protagonist that with her immortality discovered the secrets of the universe and shared them with us. Sadly she did the exact opposite. Great potential, disappointing reality.
NOTE:
All in all I think that a lot of my dislike with the book came from it not giving me what I wanted and expected. I will definitely come back to this book in a couple of years,because I believe if I'm not expecting to finally get my long awaited devil/protagonist love story this book could very easily become a favorite of mine. I do however stick to all my criticism and don't believe that will change.
ALL I WANT IS A BOOK WITH A WONDERFUL BEAUTIFUL LOVE STORY BETWEEN THE DEVIL AND THE PROTAGONIST.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a book that I believed would top my greatest books of all time list. I expected to read a book about Adeline LaRue and her life, and her deal, and how she fell in love with the darkness itself. But instead what I got was a whole lot of crushing disappointment.
ADELINE & LUC
So let's begin with our main character Adeline. For someone who's supposedly lived for 300 years she is surprisingly naive, and you would think that in 300 years you would gain a lot of wisdom and knowledge on life, and love, and the nuances and complexities of love and human emotion and the universe itself. But apparently Adeline LaRue spent 300 years just doing f****** horseshit because she has no understanding of the complexities of the world that reflects 300 years of living and she has this painful to read mentality that the world is black and white. And honestly few things piss me off more than this mentality, in real life and in books. Because life as we know it is not black and white, it's full of technicolor and grey area. And you'd think that after living 300 years and seeing centuries of life and new inventions and technology and all these great and amazing things and bearing witness to the ficklety of human emotion compared to the vastness of the future; you'd THINK that you would understand that but apparently she's could not. How she viewed Luc ( the darkness) frustrated me to no end. Because Luc through her eyes is portrayed as the villain of the story and yet all his villainous acts are simply him doing his job. Because if you make a deal with the devil, and you sell your soul, and he comes to collect, YOU CAN'T TURN AROUND PAINT HIM AS EVIL BECAUSE YOU WILLINGLY SOLD YOUR SOUL TO HIM. The only other villainous act you could possibly point out was his deal with Adeline. But even that is a stretch because sorry to say (not really) it was completely her fault because she had no idea what she wanted when she called on Luc and it makes no sense to me how you can try and call on some unknown being to fulfill a wish when you don't even know what your wish is. Honestly, I fell in love with Luc and it's depressing because the author did him a great disservice. We never got to really know anything about Luc, we never got to understand his motivations, we never got to see anything from his point of view, we never got to understand his internal dialogue, we never understood why he did what he did we never understood how he looked the world and how he perceived the world, and most importantly, how he perceived Adeline.
V. E. Shwab had a wonderful chance to build a complex and interesting and nuanced character in Luc but she instead did a great disservice to him and greater disservice to the book.
HENRY
Even when I still had hope the book would be everything I wanted to be, I still didn't like Henry. He just didn't really matter to me in the grand scheme of things, because my mentality at the time was that I'm reading a book where the main character has been alive for 300 years and the other main character is a being who has been alive for as long as the world has existed.
Therefore, I just didn't see the need to invest in the character.
We never get to see Henry's motivations and how he related to his friends and his family and to the world. His mental health struggles and anxiety, were things that were never really explained or dealt with. What exactly drove some of his mental health issues, is a question that is never asked or answered but should have been both asked and answered. I never really got attached to Henry because I didn't understand his purpose in the story. His romance and love story with Adeline was unbelievable to me and I quite frankly didn't buy it. And frankly, I wanted him and Adeline to be friends because she
had had love we had seen her with love. But never friendship. And honestly? I think that would have been beautiful.
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is a book that promised me my long awaited love story with the devil. And it did not deliver. And not only did the romance disappoint but my protagonist with as gorgeous a name as Adeline disappointed as well. V. E. Shwab had the opportunity to create a masterpiece to capture my heart and give us a romance like none we've read before. Give us a protagonist that with her immortality discovered the secrets of the universe and shared them with us. Sadly she did the exact opposite. Great potential, disappointing reality.
NOTE:
All in all I think that a lot of my dislike with the book came from it not giving me what I wanted and expected. I will definitely come back to this book in a couple of years,because I believe if I'm not expecting to finally get my long awaited devil/protagonist love story this book could very easily become a favorite of mine. I do however stick to all my criticism and don't believe that will change.