The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

This book has been everywhere lately, and no surprise. Ten years in the making, The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is haunting and poetic. It bridges the gap between historical fiction and low fantasy with charm.

And I’m gonna be honest—it was hard to read in 2020.

Since March, I’ve felt a lot like my life’s turned invisible. I rarely leave the house, my presence on social media was largely nonexistent as I withdrew from an increasingly battering news cycle, and I’m seeing less of friends and family in person than ever. For me, this book juxtaposed my contracting world with the boundless, ephemeral world Addie occupies. She can go anywhere, but she can’t make a mark.

Addie LaRue had me longing for opportunities that we just didn’t have in 2020—chances to travel, to connect with each other, to shed the deep sense of isolation we’ve been living in. But Addie pushes the constraints of her curse to take advantage of every opportunity, to make a mark in a world that’s doomed to forget her.

At first, the thought of all the chances I’d missed out on. The longer I sat with this story, the more I realize that there are cracks in the curse (or pandemic, or… you know, general nonsense of 2020), and that there are ways for us, for me, to make a mark and have, if not the life I imagined I’d have at 30, then something meaningful and connected.

This story was beautiful and rich. Somehow, Schwab managed to write around the shapes a life unremembered, and weeks later, this book is still stuck in my head.