Hardcover, 448 pages
Published Oct. 6, 2020 by Tor Books.
A Life No One Will Remember. A Story You Will Never Forget.
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.
did not like writing style, did not like characters. will confess i skipped ahead and read a significant section of the end bc i wanted to see if it was worth continuing on. decided no.
I'm continuously impressed with V.E. Schwab's ability to write such engaging characters AND engaging worlds! She's quickly becoming my favorite author.
Addie's relationship with Luc is such a better telling of a Beauty and the Beast type tale. You're never quite certain of Luc's motivation, or at least I wasn't ever convinced. I do feel bad for Henry, I was always getting the vibe that he was a pawn in Addie and Luc's game. This tale does make you think a lot about what "love" really is. Would Addie have loved Henry any more if he wasn't the exception to the rules? Did she love him any more than her other lovers over time? Or did she just love that she could tell her tale through Henry more so than she ever could through anyone else?
Can't say how much I loved this book!
This book was nice to read.
It set me thinking about immortality. How would it be to live hundreds of years, if nobody can remember you?
Smartly followed premise, a life remembered woven into thoroughly challenging questions about love and morality. If you spend your life trying to spite death, you risk losing your humanity.
This book was fine, I can see why people really liked it. It's well written and the plot is solid, but I found the picture perfect artsy Brooklyn courtship tedious, I didn't find either of the main characters all that compelling, and the tropes it relies on a little uninteresting. I was disappointed by how lacking in oddness or eccentricity it was, how credible but unremarkable the characters are.
