The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by Victoria “V.E.” Schwab
Hi, I am Sarah. I am fourteen years old and an avid reader; it is one of my favorite things to do. Inspired by authors’ creations of magnificent places and surprising havens built by simple letters, I aspire to be an author and, meanwhile, nurture the love to write.
What if you were fated to live an endless life of liberty, as much time as you could desire and the freedom to do what you truly liked with it? If you had the choice, would you take it?
That’s the story of Adeline LaRue, born in 1691 and destined to the short and depressingly drab life of a woman in a small, Catholic, French town in the seventeenth century. So she prays and prays for freedom, and eventually, someone—an old god, a powerful being of darkness—answers and grants her wish.
But it is not who she asked for, and it is not granted in the way she imagined.
Fated to live a life as long as she likes but one no one will remember. Unable to say her own name or make any sort of mark upon the world, Addie LaRue begins a long, lonely existence. She takes it day by day, year by year, until it is 2014, in New York City. She happens upon a little bookstore where someone—unthinkably, impossibly, finally—remembers her.
The premise alone is enough to draw me into this story, but the way it is written is remarkable. The picture painted of the centuries of time and humanity and art that Addie experiences is rich and exquisite. Hers is a life of pain, of desperate loneliness, but it is, in a way, the life she asked for and she is determined not to waste it. Adeline is determined to experience life, even though she cannot influence it. And that is what she does.
The format, the characters, the plot, and the gorgeous prose are all reasons to pick up this book and devour it. However, it does contain mature content and is shelved in adult fiction.
