I believe I started Addie LaRue back in the beginning of October. I finished it today, and let me tell you, in that time there has been crying, screaming and all the emotions in between. This book has been quite the emotional roller coaster as I’m sure many of you know.
Heads up: there will be a little bit of spoilers in this review.
I remember you.
V. E. Schwab
Emotional, pretty, high brow
Blurb:
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.
Thoughts (be warned this is very stream of consciousness):
I LOVE LOVE LOVE the continuation of the theme of “seven” to represent Addie’s seven freckles. This was a great point of continuity throughout the whole book. Also what I found to be really entertaining was the art starting off chapters throughout the book because it was fun to be able to see Addie’s influences in all of them. This book was also filled with lots and lots of prose which is honestly fine with me because I’m a sucker for good prose, so keep that in mind if you’re more of a plot-driving-the-story person. The ending kind of reminded me of A Court of Mist and Fury in the way that Addie went back to Luc even though she doesn’t love him.
Speaking of the ending, I will say, the ending was a little predictable, I honestly think it would have shown the most character growth if she gave up her soul completely instead of biding her time until Luc would cast her away, because it would have shown that she learned from Henry the importance of living her life to the fullest in the time that you have it instead of always trying to have the end goal of living forever and seeing as much of the world as she could. However, this didn’t change my rating much because I feel like it’s pretty nitpicky so it doesn’t really matter that much, I mean, I enjoyed it in the moment.
Overall a really great fall read, definitely reminiscent of dark academia.
Something new I want to do is having a song that represents this book. For Addie LaRue, I chose The Great War by Taylor Swift.
