 Hey guys, it's Liana. I'm here today to talk about the Invisible Life of Adi LaRue. I gave this book three stars. In retrospect, I don't know that it merits three stars. I don't know. I really did not like this book. I would go so far as to say that I kind of hated it. So three seems very high, especially if you go by the Goodreads metric of like three means I liked it. I don't think I can say that I liked it. It's just one in two stars seems more cruel. And I don't think that this book is the kind of bad where I can't I don't even know if I can put it into words. It's not the kind of bad where I'm like, oh, you suck at writing and this is terrible. And these sentences don't make sense. There's like, you know what I mean? Like it's not this sort of hateful. Like I think you suck. It's just more that I'm like really so utterly underwhelmed and disappointed. One just generally by the book, but two also knowing this author and having read other books by her. I don't love all of her books the way some people do. But I have previously read her books and thought that they were of good quality. I really love vicious, although when I first read vicious the very first time, I hated it. But that's more because I didn't know I had a very different idea of what vicious was going into it. And I was misinformed or I had the incorrect impression. So there's more expectation versus reality than the fault of the book. So I reread it years later, this time, obviously knowing what I was getting myself into. And I loved it. So I mean, I loved vicious. And I quite like the Shades of Magic series. I'm not obsessed with it. Again, all this to say, like I've experienced liking this author's work. And I have more to the point, not just liked her work, but especially in something like vicious, I have seen her willingness and her ability to portray and delve into some messy dark gray characters, which is why it's all the more shocking to me that this book completely fails on that level in particular. I failed on several levels, but that level is the one that is the most surprising to me because I know she's capable of doing this. I've seen it. So it's not so if this was a debut, I'd be like, well, this author just isn't able to do that. I know she's able to do it. I've seen it. So I just don't understand that I have to assume that it is a choice to not do that here because I've seen that she can. And that is baffling to me. If you don't know what the invisible life of Addie LaRue is at all, then I think you've been under a rock. But it is V.E. Schwab's newest book. V.E. Schwab herself has been hyping the fuck out of this book, talking about how this book is her legacy. This is her baby. She's been writing it for years. If she never wrote another book, like at least she wrote Addie. Addie is like, this is her book. And so I went into it already a little bit skeptical because I was like, I can't buy a little up to the hype that the author herself has given it. So let's go win with a grain of salt, which is just as well because it needed all the salt that it could get. But basically the story of it is Addie LaRue has been cursed to be forgotten by everybody that she meets, but she is immortal. So it's a deal with the devil type situation. So like 300 years before our present day now, this is when she made this deal. So much like Vicious, it plays with the timeline. It jumps back and forth. Vicious plays with the timeline a lot more like it jumps all over the place. She's kind of doing that here again, which is why like that is the comparison that again is the most shocking because like Vicious did it right. It played with the timeline and had messy characters. This is playing with the timeline and it should have had messy characters, but it didn't. So Addie makes this deal with the devil to, I mean, there's, there's reasons for it, although I have to say her reasons for making this deal are kind of thin and not very compelling. She didn't do a good enough job putting me in the headspace of this character to make it really believable to me that she'd be pushed to that kind of brink. Like I'm getting the kind of situation that's painted here. Like I get what she's getting at, the kind of trapped feeling that would make a person be willing to make this kind of deal, but I just didn't really buy it. Like I wasn't with Addie enough or I wasn't deep enough in Addie's head or I wasn't feeling Addie's feelings enough to really be like with her on this whole desperate times call for desperate measures thing. But I was like, all right, fine. I mean, I knew this was the premise. So here we go. Here's the inciting incident. She's making that deal. And so we flip back and forth between catching up to the present where like Addie is getting to know her curse, getting to know how it works, trying to navigate how to live in a world with this curse, how to make the best of life while cursed. And the present day where she meets a young man who she's like quite enamored of. And throughout history and in the present, she has routinely, typically on the anniversary of her curse, she meets up with the one who cursed her, who is this ambiguously dark character he's referred to as the darkness. And he's kind of the devil in the story. Although when they talk about whether or not he is the devil, like Lucifer or Beelzebub or whatever, that remains vague and unclear. But he is this dark force who has, who she sold her soul to in exchange for eternal life at the expense of no one remembering her. So I remember when I heard that premise. I thought to myself, it's decently cool premise, but that sounds to me like a short story. That sounds to me like something that could be a really compelling, interesting snippet. It's something that I could easily see Neil Gaiman writing. And I know that Beelzebub and Neil Gaiman are friends. So part of me was like, is Neil influencing her? Except I wish Neil Gaiman had written this because then it would be good. But Beelzebub herself is written short stories. That's what this felt like that premise. I was like, I'm really struggling to see how you could stretch that premise into a full novel. But all right, like I trust you. Like you're not my favorite author by any stretch, but you are a good author and you've told interesting stories like Vicious. So let's see what you do with it. If you think there's a novel's worth of story here, let's see what that is. And there is not a novel's worth of story here. I still think that it's difficult to stretch this concept into a full novel yet in the hands of an author like Neil Gaiman it could be done. And I would have thought an author like the Eshwab could have the capacity to do it. And she's been, by her own estimation and admission, she's been writing this thing for years. Like I might be wrong with this, but I recall her at one point saying she's been writing it for like 10 years. I might be mixed up about that length of time, but it's been years for sure. Years plural. I don't know what she's been doing for those years. This book doesn't, it feels like it needs a lot more delving, a lot more work. And it was so surface level. I'm gonna put this down because it's kind of heavy. It was so, so, so surface level. I had a lot of problems with it as well in terms of a sort of logistical kind of problems with it. Like with the mechanics of the curse, we'll get into in a second. But that part of it, I'd be willing to forgive more if I had found the characters really, really, really compelling. Because then to me, that type of story, the curse itself is kind of irrelevant because the curse is really just the excuse to place our characters in this situation, which tests their metal. And that's what we're here for is to really delve into these characters. And like the curse is like, just like an inciting device to put them in that situation. But it's kind of like, okay, like we curse them. So curse irrelevant. But like what we're here for is to analyze what that would do to your mind. We didn't really do either. So she spends kind of a lot of time going into sort of the details of how the curse works, which is to its detriment, because she goes into enough detail where you're like, okay, so you're wanting me to really buy this and to really delve into the details of how this curse is supposed to work. And yet there are a lot of holes in this. Wait, I'll get 20 seconds. But I couldn't ignore those because again, you spent a lot of time on them. And two, you did not write compelling characters. You it just was not believable that Addie LaRue was 300 years old. Because if you're alive for 300 years, that's already going to mess with you a little bit. If you're alive for 300 years, and not able to create have any human connection, because everyone forgets you, that would fuck with your head hardcore, it would, which is why having her, I've seen her write messed up characters in vicious. So Eli and Victor are a little messed up in the head. Addie should be more messed up in the head. Addie is way too boringly normal for somebody who's been alive for as long as she has, has had zero consequences for her actions because no one remembers her. So she can do whatever fuck she wants within the limits of her curse. And who has not the thing that tempers people more often than not is empathy is human connection is when you've got people around you who you care about who sort of who reign in your baser instincts and your darker impulses. And she has had none of those things for 300 years. And all this girl does like she finds you know going to the museum interesting because you know even after 300 years there's always something new and and art is always so wonderful because she can't make her mark so art is wow. And there's this thread throughout about how she's sort of she can't create anything because of the curse because if you if you leave a mark then people will remember you. So that's part of like people forgetting her. She can't affect the world really in any permanent way, which again breaks down very quickly when you go into what she can do. And I'm like well why that? We shall talk about it in a second. But she's been going around her day to day, steals a muffin, steals a new outfit, admires the sunset. Like here and there we'll hear reference to the fact that she did live through some world wars. Do we see her experiencing those world wars? No. Again I you living through a single war like that as a normal human you would be oh so much more interesting and fucked up because of it. And she's lived through multiple huge wars. She wasn't able to have a human to share it with. So she should be so interestingly messed up. Like she should be Abercrombie level, fascinatingly messed up. And she's not. She's so dull. And the book is written in this style which graded on my nerves to no end where the the authorial voice seems to think that this story is deep as hell and that Addie is fascinating as hell. It's just like the tone of the author to to write it this way where the assumption is that you agree that yeah that this is deep and that Addie's so great. I was just like the balls of that was reminiscent of Dark Dawn to me by J.Cristoff which I also hate for many reasons but that being one of them this sort of self-referential patting itself on the back in the text. And there's a spoilery so I won't explain how but not just the authorial attitude but there is literally like circumstances in the book that are which is less open to interpret because on authorial voice you could say well that's just your impression of it and that's you can't say that was the author's intent with her like maybe you're projecting that which you know fair maybe I was because I've heard her talk about this book but there's events in the book that do this actively like not in a way that's subjective where it's in the text this sort of nod to how great the book is and I just found that so nauseating and again like I won't say what that is because it's kind of spoilery but it's there and I fucking hated it I was like really really lady really okay and so then the curse the way it works I guess this is mildly spoilery so warning I don't think it is really that spoilery because it's just kind of like the rules for how her curse works and yes like you don't know that on page one because you Addie's figuring it out and you slowly find it out from Addie but it's not like none of it is a bomb shell in any way none of it's like oh I didn't know the curse worked like that like it's just kind of gradually telling you the rules so warning if you want it like if you want to really not know how the curse works for whatever reason I'm about to kind of touch on that so FYI as I mentioned before because people forget her the moment they see her or the moment they don't see her actually is how I should say that and she can't leave a mark meaning she can't like if she writes me on a piece of paper the marks just disappear and fade if she breaks something it mends itself anything that would sort of permanently affect the space that she's occupied or leave a mark for someone else to find she can't do it because that would leave something for somebody to remember her by so that's the kind of those are the rules for her life so for that reason then you know she can't journal because she can't leave a mark on a piece of paper if someone tries to take a picture of her like her face gets blurred there can't be any record of her having been somewhere although her body is visible it's her face that's blurred so like I guess it's an argument for your face being your identity rather than any other part of your body which you know I guess we're all fingerprints so it doesn't get too in in detail about that like you know presumably some of her hair falls out where she goes which would leave DNA evidence but like we don't really go into forensics in the book so we don't go that far into it I don't know how that's supposed to work so the thing that really okay so the two things that really break down from immediately are the fact that okay so if somebody is talking to her like while they're talking to her they know who she is and or they are aware that they're talking to her she's not like invisible so like if I walked up to you and I was like hi how are you doing I'm lianna like oh nice to meet you lianna and like are you looking for something like I can have a full conversation with you and as long as I keep talking to you as long as you're still like within I'm still in your line of sight then you still know that I'm there and you still know you remember what we've been talking about but as soon as you leave or as soon as a door closes it's a lot to do with doors so like if we're standing on a doorstep it's fine but as soon as that door closes and opens again you would have forgotten me which okay all right however we get a lot of montagey descriptions of the kind of one night stand type connections that she's been able to make that she'll go on basically 50 first dates with the same person because and so that's kind of how she's dating them because she likes them and she likes spending time with them and she's kind of relives the same right over and over and she keeps hearing the same introductory lines the same pickup lines because for them it's the first time so they go up to her and they're like you know hey like you remind me of someone she's like well that's what you said last night and the night before and the night before and then like they'll they'll hang out together have a whole day together sleep together and then the next morning if she's bothered to hang around they wake up and they think that like they must have gotten drunk and slept with her because they don't remember her but she's like in their apartment so that does not work for me because if you've spent the whole day with this person did they never go pee did she go with them to go pee for because this again like if it's like a two hour date okay a two hour date that quickly escalates to sex okay but she talks about spending a whole like whole days with people where they have never once gone to the bathroom because that's all it takes is to step into another room is to have a door closed and they forget her so it's just immediately unbelievable to me that that was possible but apparently it is I don't know how but it is and again we don't really see those dates they're more of a montage recollection of like this is the way she has passed her time but that's it doesn't it then don't write the curse that way make it like a 24 hour thing where like they'll remember you for 24 hours at a time or something like that but if it's like the moment the door closes again pretty sure but then if you haven't gone to the bathroom in 12 hours yikes especially because all these dates are like going to coffee shops and restaurants whatever like I'm pretty sure you need to pee at the very least pee so it's just nope and then this whole not being able to like uh break something or leave a mark really also doesn't work for me because like I said if she breaks something it men's itself because having broken it would leave its mark but if you steal money which she does and use it to buy a muffin and eat that muffin you're breaking the muffin first by chewing it and then by digesting it so why is that why does that work I don't I don't understand how that could possibly be different because there's a scene where she it's like a wooden statue or sculpture or something and she like knocks it over or drops it or something and it breaks and then immediately fixes itself like it was never broken like she was never there but like this isn't addressed but like if you just ordered a muffin then there's one less muffin in the case which means some person is not going to be able to have a muffin that is you know if we're talking butterfly effect that is that's a mark you've left you have broken the muffin so and then she not only eats a muffin herself but she buys two muffins at one point he has one for herself and then brings the other one to the old man that of course I don't remember her because she's met him many times which is why she knows she likes he likes his muffin but for him it's the first time eating her because he doesn't remember her but he's eating the muffin that she brought that's having an effect those are calories he's consuming I just I don't understand why that's different I don't that's just it's not gone into like a but you know food is different because it's just I guess food is different for some reason however she can't light a fire herself which is also like it just doesn't really like the more it tries to make sense where it's like all these little things you wouldn't have thought of where like but she can't do that because that'd be leaving a mark like I feel like I'm supposed to be going like oh wow those all these little details that I never would have thought of but those would be leaving a mark all it's making me think of is all the ways that she is still leaving a mark that really don't fit with this curse so it just frustrated me more than anything and again I had no I wasn't able to forget my frustrations and just sort of get lost in the story of these humans because Addy herself is boring as shit for somebody like boring as shit just generally like I don't think she's a very interesting protagonist and then especially for somebody that's been alive cursed for 300 years how are you this boring how and then even more to the point the darkness devil whatever that cursed her frequently makes illusion of the fact that out of all of humanity Addy is the one that really has enticed him has really you know caught his eye that she's the only one that is really that interesting to him because she's not even like other people anymore because she's lived so long and I'm like in theory all of that should be true in theory a person like that should stand out and be more interesting but she's not so whenever the darkness makes illusion to how fascinating and interesting and desirable and enigmatic she is I'm just like it was just reminding me again and again and again about how she absolutely should be and is not those things so it's not believable to me that the darkness feel this way about her and it's also not believable to me that she is not that way because the darkness should be able to feel that way about her because she should be that way it was very frustrating and then like the book kept feeling like in addition to thinking that it was well written and it being clear from the author's voice that she thinks it's incredibly well written the amount of times when the the book seemed to think it was saying something deep and it wasn't it it's just I mean it just wasn't like nothing about this book there's nothing about the concept or the execution it was really one of those like oh really made me stop and think it really made me consider really made me reflect on the nature of identity and mortality I've heard plenty of stories that really did make me consider those things this was not one of them I recently read alias grace by market atwood and that's a book where it is constantly throwing out even simple one-liners where it made me stop and think and made me reflect on gender and place in society and rank and the nature of the mind and about whether or not who like are actually weirdly alias grace is a much better job addressing does memory is memory identity and his identity tied to memory because the whole thing with alias grace is that grace is a convicted murder rest but she doesn't recall having murdered anyone it's kind of blacked out or so she says so if who we are is what we remember is she innocent or is she lying so like it's doing a lot more to make you question those things adi larou would have been fine to be this surface level if it was a short story in a short story the presumption is that we don't have the space and time to really delve into the rules of the curse or into like really who adi is because that is a page count that we don't have so this was like a 10 to 20 page short story I feel like it could pack a punch and and the all of the all of it what it was lacking would be more enigmatic because you're like well these are all things that I didn't have time to tell and they're left to the imagination in a 400 page book you had the room to tell it and chosen out to so it can you can no longer be like oh well it's just an enigma no we were with adi for a long time in this book and she was really boring it was really really fucking boring which again is shocking to me like this was a debut author debut book um I would think to myself like well I guess this author just like doesn't have the capacity to write really dark characters and really delve into like a messed up mind to really go there except I read vicious like a no Schwab can do it I is it because she likes adi too much that she didn't have it in her to write her to be unlikable and was afraid she'd be unlikable if she wrote her realistically because realistically I don't know that adi would be likable but she'd be a hell of a lot more enjoyable to read about if she was more unlikable because it would be fascinating as a character here she's just she's so bland she is so vanilla I just was shocked at how boring she was and how boring the book was and how this is your legacy this one all right so let me know in the comments down below if you've read the invisible life of adi literally if you like the majority of of the reading community is blown away and this nocturne socks off you just think it's the most amazing book ever and it like Schwab really like nailed it feel free to let me know because that's again based on what I've seen in the reviews that ought to be the majority of y'all so do let me know why I'm wrong but if you're with me that's always great to hear as well so let me know that I post videos on saturdays other random times as well but definitely saturdays so like and subscribe and I'll see you when I see you bye