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The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab

Fantasy

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

BOTY FINALIST

Each year thousands of members vote for our Book of the Year award—congrats to The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue!

by V.E. Schwab

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Quick take

A life of immortality is not all it’s cracked up to be when no one remembers who you are. That is, until someone does.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, 400

    400+ pages

  • Illustrated icon, LGBTQ_themes

    LGBTQ+ themes

  • Illustrated icon, Nonlinear_Timeline

    Nonlinear timeline

  • Illustrated icon, Critically_Acclaimed

    Critically acclaimed

Synopsis

France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.

Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.

But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

Villon-sur-Sarthe, France

July 29, 1714

A girl is running for her life.

The summer air burns at her back, but there are no torches, no angry mobs, only the distant lanterns of the wedding party, the reddish glow of the sun as it breaks against the horizon, cracks and spills across the hills, and the girl runs, skirts tangling in the grass as she surges toward the woods, trying to beat the dying light.

Voices carry on the wind, calling her name.

Adeline? Adeline? Adeline!

Her shadow stretches out ahead—too long, its edges already blurring—and small white flowers tumble from her hair, littering the ground like stars. A constellation left in her wake, almost like the one across her cheeks.

Seven freckles. One for every love she’d have, that’s what Estele had said, when the girl was still young.

One for every life she’d lead.

One for every god watching over her.

Now, they mock her, those seven marks. Promises. Lies. She’s had no loves, she’s lived no lives, she’s met no gods, and now she is out of time.

But the girl doesn’t slow, doesn’t look back; she doesn’t want to see the life that stands there, waiting. Static as a drawing. Solid as a tomb.

Instead, she runs.

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Why I love it

My favorite stories are the ones I’ve heard before. Partly I blame my own obsessive personality for that—I’ve reread The Blue Sword a truly upsetting number of times—and partly I think it’s a deeper human thing. We like resonance and repetition; we like to shout under bridges just to hear the echoes.

So when I say The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue feels like a book I’ve read before, I mean that as high praise. Addie is a girl who wants to be more than she is, so she makes a deal with the kind of devil whose deals are always worse than they seem. For centuries she exists in a lonely purgatory, blessed with immortality and cursed to be forgotten—until the day she meets a boy who remembers her.

See how that story echoes? See how it rings all those old bells? Crossroads at midnight and gods that come out after dark, doomed lovers and deals with devils. But Addie LaRue isn’t a retelling or a reinvention, although it feels faintly familiar. It’s a new story.

Or maybe a very old one that we all—somehow—forgot.

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Member ratings (74,391)

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View all
Starling House
Heartless Hunter
The Lost Story
A Fate Inked in Blood
Five Broken Blades
Ink Blood Sister Scribe
The Unfortunate Side Effects of Heartbreak and Magic
The Kingdom of Sweets
Hera
A Sorceress Comes to Call
Hell Bent
Kaikeyi
Weyward
The Unmaking of June Farrow
The Fragile Threads of Power
Beasts of Extraordinary Circumstance
The Book of Magic
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
The Rules of Magic
A History of Wild Places
Gods of Jade and Shadow
The City We Became
A River Enchanted
The Inheritance of Orquídea Divina
Piranesi
Thistlefoot
Half Sick of Shadows
Ariadne
Ninth House
The Invisible Hour
Clytemnestra
Sourdough
Siren Queen
The Last Tale of the Flower Bride
Fate of the Fallen
Immortal Longings
Practical Magic