 Hello and welcome back to my channel. My name is Jackie and a couple of weeks ago I read The Invisible Life of Adi LaRue by V.E. Schwab. And I didn't love it. So in this video I'm going to attempt to fix it. So a couple of warnings up front. If you are someone who loves this book, you don't have to watch this video. Like feel free to turn off right now because I don't want to get into an argument. If you have not read this book and you would like to, there are going to be spoilers in this video. So again, you don't need to be watching this. Feel free to go away and come back at a later date. Otherwise, hello to everyone who's left if you're new here. I'm an aspiring writer and reader and I get frustrated when stories don't live up to their potential. So if you haven't heard of this book, The Invisible Life of Adi LaRue is about a girl named Adeline or Adi who makes a deal with the devil to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. And the book covers her journey for over 300 years. So it's 300 years from 1714 when she makes the deal to 2014, present day, when she meets someone who remembers her name. So this premise is awesome. I follow V.E. Schwab on YouTube and Instagram and when she started talking about it on Instagram, I was like, yes, I need this book. So I was really excited to read it. And then when I read it, I was so underwhelmed that I wasn't even disappointed by it because I didn't care enough to get disappointed. And I think there are a number of things that went wrong that caused this. So what went wrong in my humble opinion? First, I feel like the idea is very ambitious. It is difficult to show one character's life over the span of 300 years, that is a very long time. And it's also difficult to show a character's evolution through that length of time because Schwab has lived for 10% of that time. She is in her early 30s. So it's very hard for anyone alive today to put themselves in the position of someone who has 300 years of knowledge and experience and so on. And I think that definitely was lacking in this book. Addie's character didn't evolve that much from the beginning to the end, which is extremely unrealistic if she's been alive for that long. Even if, due to the curse, she isn't able to develop meaningful relationships in that time. I feel like this is something that can be done well though. And earlier this year, I read The Raven Cycle by Ann Leakey. And one of the, in fact, the only point of your character in that book, but one of the characters whose story was told in that book is a god who has been around pretty much since the beginning of time. And when you see this god's thought processes, you see how separate they are from our human everyday concerns and squabbles and so on. And Addie didn't really have that same detachment that I think would happen after 300 years. The other character I found quite weak was, unfortunately, Luke, or the devil character or the darkness character. The fact that I need to refer to him in these three ways is one of the problems because who he is and what his role is isn't clearly defined. At the beginning, there's an older woman in Addie's village who mentions that you shouldn't make wishes to the gods who come out after dark, and he is a god who comes out after dark to answer her plea for freedom. And he is called, in the marketing material, or at least in the marketing material leading up to the release of the book, it was talking about her making a deal with the devil. In the book, he is more referred to as the darkness and he seems to disappear into shadows and then come back into being. And what he wants is human souls. This is all we know about him. We don't know why he wants the souls. Is it necessary for him to have the souls or is he just greedy or evil, I suppose? And the deal he makes with Addie is that he can have her soul when she's done with it. So basically, he has a vested interest in making her life miserable so he can get her soul. But the thing is, we don't learn much more about him beyond that. We know that there are a lot of other people in the world who are made deals with him, whose souls he's feeding on, so why does he keep going back to this one? You know, it could have been developed as she was a challenge that he wanted to figure out. She was the only one who resisted him for so long, so there was that element. It could have been that he became fascinated with her as she grew older and had more perspective and became more like him than the human she was surrounded by. But none of that was developed. So it was just this random guy with his dark curls and green eyes showing up every few chapters to go, are you ready for me to take your soul now and not be tired? And that's a real shame because the story would have been so much stronger if he was more developed. So character development was one thing. The second thing was pacing. This was a very slow-moving book, and I don't think it was helped by the fact that pretty much every alternating chapter jumped between present day and the past. So you would have a chapter in 2014 and then it would go back to 2017-14, you'd have a chapter in 2014, it would go back to 1769 and so on. And what this meant was that it took a long time for anything to happen because you're reading each timeline at half the speed. I also think that this potentially hid some of the weaknesses of the book from the editor because when you're sort of reading these timelines jumbled up amongst each other, it's very easy to get focused on each scene as an individual piece of content, rather than part of a larger story. And what I found was that in the past timeline especially, there really wasn't that much of a plot, there wasn't much forward momentum because we were just jumping in every few years or every few decades to see what Addie was up to as opposed to following her, you know, going on a specific journey or pursuing a certain goal, like you usually experience when you interact with fiction. Instead, the strongest parts of the historical story were at the beginning when she made the agreement and we saw her for the first few months and a few years trying to figure out the curse and how to survive when no one could remember her. And then also a period in, I think it was from the 1950s to 70s when she had a relationship with the Devil. So both of those times had a clear story to tell, so they were much more compelling as opposed to the other, what, 250 years that we covered where it was just showing Addie at a random event or a random time in history or showing her having the same conversation with the Devil again. So the pace was quite slow because of that, and as I said, I feel like if the book had been written chronologically it would have been much easier for both Schwab and her editors to see that there were these huge chunks that actually had no story and they didn't achieve things that hadn't already been achieved. So many of the scenes from the past were examples of people forgetting her, but we've already established that people don't remember her, so we don't need to see this again even though it's in an interesting new time period. And that leads me on to my next point, which is the amount of repetition, and not that the exact same event was happening again and again, but we had multiple scenes that were designed to achieve the same thing. And if you saw my beta reader video, you'll know that this is actually a weakness of mine in my writing. I discovered when I got feedback on my book Powerless where I often had a couple of scenes that achieve the same thing, and you only really need to achieve something once before you move on. And that really happened with this book. Like I said, she would meet people who'd forget her, but we only need to see that so many times. Like we need to see it to establish the curse, and then we also need to see it to, I think, demonstrate the emotional gut punch of the curse, and then that's enough. It's been established. We don't need to see lover after lover who forgets her when they wake up in the morning. The other bits that were really repetitive were her interactions with the devil slash the darkness slash Luke, especially at the beginning where basically he would pop up once a year or once every few years to go, okay, are you ready for me to take your soul yet? Are you tired of this life? And she would say, no, I will fight you forever. And again, we only need to have that interaction once to see the dynamic. When he appears again, it should be moving that relationship forward in some way. It shouldn't be illustrating the same thing again. The other challenge with this back and forth structure is beyond making it very slow and very repetitive, it also means there's no momentum to the plot. So I've already mentioned like the past sections, it didn't really feel like we were moving forward or going anywhere. In the present day sections, there was more of a narrative, but still because it kept being interrupted, it didn't feel like we were going anywhere. And there were also events that happened that should have been shocking. In fact, a big one is when Abby meets Henry. Henry is the boy who remembers her name, is the first person to remember her in 300 years. And this is supposed to be a big moment. In fact, let's get a quote. Basically, she meets this boy, she goes to him, I should stop calling him a boy, he's like 28, but she meets this man, and she goes to his bookshop and steals a book expecting him to forget her. And she comes back the next day to return it. His face hardens, the flat regard of a door slam shut, word of advice. Next time you try to return a book, don't return it to the same person you stole it from last time. A rock drops inside her chest. What? He shakes his head. You were just in here yesterday. I wasn't. I remember you. Three words, large enough to tip the world. I remember you. Addie leches as if struck, about to fall. She tries to write herself. No, you don't. She says firmly. His green eyes narrow. Yes, I do. You came in here yesterday, green sweater, black jeans. You stole this used copy of the Odyssey, which I gave back to you because who steals a used copy of the Odyssey in Greek anyways. And then you have the nerve to come back in here and try to trade it out for something else when you didn't even buy the first one. Addie closes her eyes, vision swimming. She doesn't understand. She can't. Now look, he says, I think you better go. She opens her eyes and sees him pointing to the door. Her feet won't move. They refuse to carry her away from those three words. I remember you. Now this is a beautiful moment. The problem is, it happens on page 135. So if you can see this, 135 of the almost 450 page book, yeah, 444. That is like a third of the, less than a third of the way through this book. And that doesn't make sense because this is supposed to be such a major turning point. Like, I feel like this should be at the midpoint of the book. And this is one of the issues caused by this back and forth structure in that it's in the past where we really understand the pain of her curse. And there are certain things to illustrate this, like first, her parents don't know who she is, the old woman in the village doesn't know who she is. But then later, there's this beautiful interaction with a boy she meets and they spend the evening together and they have a picnic in front of the Sacre-Cœur and it's this beautiful, beautiful evening. And then she wakes up the next morning in his room and he doesn't know her. And it's the first time you really feel it. The parents not remembering her is shocking because it's new and it's like what's happening, whereas this is more heartbreaking. And the thing is that because of the way this book is structured, that moment doesn't happen until after she meets this guy who remembers her. So that actually weakens the power of this I remember you moment because we haven't felt the pain of her not being remembered. And I felt like this was the case with a couple of things in the book where I always feel like Schwab was trying to be too clever with this back and forth structure, like maybe she didn't think just a linear story would be as good or something. But I feel like this would have been much stronger as a linear story because we would have been able to have that emotional development. We would have, we would have had the forward momentum, we would have had the emotional and character development. And then when we have moments like that, they would have hit so much harder. And linked to that, in fact, as I keep talking, I realise that probably my biggest problem with this story is the way it's structured, because it could have been so much better by just putting things in chronological order. But anyway, throughout the book, she keeps making these passing references to this how she had in New Orleans, the one time she was able to be still and actually have a home where everything didn't slip through her fingers. And through these breadcrumbs trailed throughout the book, we find out she was living with Luke at the time. They had some sort of relationship and she hasn't seen him in, I don't know, 40 years, maybe 50 years, because they had some sort of argument which ended in the house burning down. Now, that's all interesting to hint towards. But then we don't actually get to that moment until towards the very end of the book. And one of the ways this book is marketed is as a love triangle. So it's between her and Henry and Luke. And the thing is, Luke, even though he's been around 300 years and they had this relationship, which was, I think, 20 years, maybe 30 years, he is much less present in the book. We don't see that relationship develop. We don't see their, we don't see their dynamic develop. So that we get to this bit towards the end of the book, let's say around 80% through the book, where it's just a flashback. It goes from starting with just being sex to being more than sex and then suddenly it's an argument. And it doesn't really create a fair fight. I mean, if you want a real love triangle, it should be a difficult decision between the two guys. And then the final thing that didn't work for me in this book is that even though it's almost 450 pages, very little happens. And by very little happening, I mean very little happens of consequence. Now, when things are happening in a story, like the story only focuses on the important things and things that develop character or move the story forward. And so much of this book didn't achieve either of that. It was, like I mentioned earlier, let's catch up with Addy in these different time periods. And that was it. And that's why I had this feeling at the end of the book, like, Oh, was that it? And when I was reflecting on it, I realized there were only four key plot points in the book, like only four events that happen that move the story forward or change it in some way. These are Addy makes her deal with the devil to live forever cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets. Addy meets a boy who remembers her. The boy also has a secret and she finds out what it is. She makes another deal. Those are the only events of any significance in this book. And in order to tell a story about those few events, like that could have been a short story. It could have been 5000 words. It didn't need to be what 100,000 words, however long this is. So, all in all, it's funny. I feel myself getting frustrated as I talk about this. And the thing is, I wasn't that frustrated when I read it. Like I mentioned earlier, I didn't really care. I'm enough to be disappointed that the more I think about it in retrospect, the more I'm frustrated that this was an awesome press. It had the potential to be a great book. And it just fell short. And I feel like a lot of these problems could have been easily avoided. So, now, with my limited writing and story structure knowledge, I'm going to attempt to fix it. So my plan is to come up with a new plot for this book. Obviously, I'm not going to rewrite it. It's going to be fairly high level. But I'm hoping that if I define the key plot points, and have them in a sequence that makes sense, it'll show that this could have been a much stronger story. Because of this, I'm going to be cutting things, I'm going to be chopping and changing things. But I do want to keep the fundamental elements of the story the same. So, our main cast of characters are Addy, Henry, and Luke. That's not going to change. The premise, Addy makes a deal with the devil, so we're gotten by everyone she meets, until someone remembers her name 300 years later. That's going to stay the same. I think I will keep the love triangle as well. So, she is going to have, even if you can even call it a love triangle, to be honest, because she's not involved with them at the same time anyway. But anyway, I'm going to keep the love triangle. So, she will be with Henry, she will be with Luke. And I'm going to keep those four plot points. So, she makes the deal, she meets the boy he remembers, she discovers he has a secret, and she makes another deal. The only fundamental thing I'm thinking of changing is the very ending. But let's see how this goes. I've never tried doing anything like this before, so it's going to be an interesting experiment. Beyond what I'm going to keep from the original story, I suppose the next question is, am I going to use any guidelines to create the new one? And yes. So, I'm going to use the structure from Story Engineering by Larry Brooks, just because I really like that approach to organizing stories. So, if you haven't read it, Story Engineering breaks stories into four parts. Part one is the setup, part two is the response, part three is the attack, and part four is the resolution. And these are halfway in between each of the plot points. So, the first one is at 37.5%, and the second one is at 62.5%. So, this gives us five key events. So, turning point, first pinch point, midpoint, second pinch point, and climax. And these are divided between the four parts. So, setup is where you meet the world, the characters, and so on. Turning point happens, which gets the story going. Then part two, the response, is where the protagonist is basically reacting to what has happened to them. Then we have the midpoint, which changes direction. So, the protagonist gets some information or some skills or some help that makes them realize they can solve the puzzle or defeat the antagonist. So, part three, the attack is when they become more active, rather than just reacting to what's happened to them, they attack. And then the resolution, so we have the climax, epic final battle, whatever happens, and the resolution is returning to the new normal. He also lists a couple of smaller events that happen, and one of these is the inciting incident, which I think is worth discussing, because what I've found is that most story structure approaches and most plotting books, they don't distinguish between the inciting incident and the turning point. What Larry Brooks says is an inciting incident is an incident that incites more action. It causes something else to happen. However, it might not start the story. The turning point is the one that sets the story on its trajectory. The example that works really well in his book is Thelma and Louise. When I think it's Thelma, I really should look this up, because I forget this every time I talk about it. But when Thelma shoots the guy in the car park, that is not the turning point that starts the plot. That is an inciting incident. And the reason for this is because after that event, there are any number of things that could happen, they could turn themselves in, they could chop up and hide the body, they could go on the run, and so on. Instead, what happens is they return to the bar and talk about what to do next, and they decide to go on the run. That conversation and that decision is the turning point, because that's what defines the plot that will happen. And I think what is interesting about the invisible life of Adi LaRue is that the curse is treated as the turning point. It's treated as the event that makes the plot happen. But the thing is, the story isn't actually about the curse. It's about... Or I don't think it's meant to be about the curse. It's meant to be about her relationships with these two men, Henry and Luke. So, given that, I would argue that the curse is not the turning point, it is the inciting incident, or an inciting incident. Therefore, rather than it happening at the 25% mark and putting the rest of the plot in motion, it would happen within the first 25% somewhere. It's part of the setup. So, that's what I'm starting with. From here, I'm going to do a little bit of brainstorming. I'm going to flip through the book and make note of the things that I want to keep, and I will check back when I'm done. I am done, and I actually think I'll be able to keep maybe 50% of the book, which is more than I was expecting, to be completely honest. So, I think the four-part structure actually works perfectly with this book, because there are four distinct stories I can see there. So, part one is the setup. That's her life in 1714. It's the events that led up to her making the deal with Luke and getting cursed, and it's her trying to figure out how the curse works. Then part two, I think, is her relationship with Luke. So, it's that developing over time until it actually becomes a romance. Then part three is her relationship with Henry. So, as you can see, this is linear now. Parts one and two, they're the historical timeline. So, from 1714 to today, and then part three is when we're in the present-day timeline when she meets Henry, they develop their romance, and she discovers his secret. And his secret, by the way, is that he also made a deal with Luke. He wanted to be wanted. He wanted to be loved unconditionally by everyone. And the way that worked was everyone started seeing him as what they wanted rather than who he was. And the one thing that Addy wanted was to be remembered. So, the curses worked well together. He remembered her because that's what she wanted. And he falls for her because she isn't seeing him as something he's not. She doesn't want someone who's perfect. She just wants someone who remembers. So, she actually sees him as who he is. So, that's how that relationship happens. But part three is about that relationship. And then part four is her trying to get Luke to cancel the deal that he made on Henry. And the ultimate resolution of that and her agreeing to a new deal with Luke, which is she will be with him. So, in that overview, nothing has changed from the original story and what played out over those 300 years. What has changed when it comes to how the book is structured is, one, it's chronological now. So, I think this is going to better enable us to feel the build up and see why it's such a big thing when Henry remembers her. Two, we're going to cut back a lot of the historical content that didn't contribute anything, even though there might have been nice moments. Three, we're going to need to add a lot more about Luke. And then four, like I said earlier, I'm thinking about changing the end, but I think I'll wait until I get to the end. After figuring out the four parts, I then wanted to organize the scenes in each part of the book. So what I'm using here is the story clock, which is basically a circular method of organizing your book. It's really helpful for signing symmetry in your book, and it's also helpful when paired with story engineering because the clock is also grouped into four quarters, so you can easily see whether the different events are happening at the right time. Though in hindsight, what I realized was once I started working with the four parts, I actually forgot about my pinch points and so on. So hopefully the story still works when I'm done. It has now been a couple of days and I've put together a list of how I think the book could go and then I thought, why not type it up just so I can be really organized for this video? And I now have five and a half thousand words, so we're probably going to be here for a while. But basically the story itself doesn't change that much. The biggest changes are putting it into chronological order and then changing the emphasis on some things. And that's usually done by maybe adding in some scenes or maybe taking out some of the scenes that are already there. So here is Jackie's take on the invisible life of Adi LaRue and I hope you like it. So the book starts in 1714 with Adi meeting her future husband for the first time. She is 23, very independent, and has always longed for freedom and adventure. He, Robert, is a widower with two young children and is looking for a replacement lover. Now the difference between this and the real book, and before I go on, most of what I do now is just going to be going through the new story, but there are a couple of bits where I'm going to take a step back and explain why I've made a change from the original. So the difference between this and the original book is that we never meet the future husband in the book. In fact, we just get a handful of paragraphs about him, but we never meet him, we never interact with him. And given that the book begins with the sentence, a girl is running for her life. Like, and we later discover that what she's running from is her wedding. When we catch up to that moment in the book, it doesn't really feel that desperate. And I think the reason is because we haven't met Robert. And what she says about him is that there's nothing wrong with him, but there's nothing right with him either. And that doesn't seem like a running from your life type of scenario to me. That seems like a maybe the grasses greener scenario. So all we have that leads to her running from her life is this vague yearning for adventure that she's always had and the fact that she's going to marry this man who she doesn't think much of. So I feel like if we can really meet him and see them clash a little bit, that will make that much more relevant. Whereas at the moment, it feels a little bit melodramatic. So she doesn't want the marriage. She has been avoiding attracting anyone's interest ever since she reached a marriageable age. However, her parents are worried about her and she wants to make them proud, especially her father. So she decides she's going to try and make it work. So perhaps she tries talking to him about travel or art. She might talk about some of the trips she took with her father when she was younger. And we learn about how important this is to her from those conversations. Rather than engaging with conversations, though, Robert shuts her down and I think it would be good to have a scene where maybe they've got both of their parents over for dinner and he belittles her in front of everyone and maybe talks about how her dreams are stupid or even if we want to get extreme, how he's going to beat those dreams out of her. And everyone laughs at Addy. She's sitting there blushing and humiliation and she tries to laugh it off with everyone that she realizes that she can't be trapped with this man. She realizes he's never going to change and she won't be with someone who makes her feel small and makes her look foolish. So she then goes to her father. Her father is also an artist. He's someone who understood her more than anyone else and who took her traveling to town with him when she was little. He also gave her this small wooden ring that she always wears on a court around her neck. She begs him to let her out of the marriage and he tells her it's time for her to learn her place. He says he was too easy on her when she was younger and now it's time for her to grow up. She's put off her responsibilities for long enough. Perhaps there's a conversation with Estelle, the old woman in the town and the old gods here. If this doesn't happen now, the gods will need to be introduced earlier. Perhaps we saw Estelle on the way to visit Robert and Addy reflects on these past conversations or maybe Addy even spent some time with Estelle learning how to make some tonics on medicines which she'll need to know for when she's a mother and the discussion about the old gods comes up in this conversation. We come to the day of the wedding. Addy is getting ready for the ceremony and her mother is tightening the laces of her dress and every tug feels like the tightening of a noose. She knows that she can't do this. They start to walk towards the village and Addy says she's got something in the house. She turns and starts heading towards the house and then starts running. She runs past the house and into the forest. She knows the gods expect sacrifices so she tears the wooden ring from around her neck and offers it to any god who'll listen begging for freedom. What she doesn't realize is that the sun has set and Estelle warned her never to pray to the gods who come out after dark. A shadow appears before her and then takes the form of a man with dark curly hair and bright green eyes. She'll later call him Luke. She asks for freedom. She says she'll give anything and he says the only payment he accepts is souls. He asks her what she wants most. She says I want a chance to live. I want to be free. I want more time. He asks how much time? She tries to think of a number 50, 100 years. No number feels big enough. He says you ask for time without limit. You want freedom without rule. You want to be untethered. You want to live exactly as you please. Yes, this is what she wants. But Luke refuses the deal. He says he isn't bound to her wins. He sets the rules. He makes the deals. He refuses when he wants. So she makes him an offer. He can take her life when she is done with it. He agrees and they seal the deal with a kiss. She later wakes up in the woods and decides to head home filled with dread at the thought of seeing her parents after running from the wedding. When she arrives, her mother opens the door asking what she's doing there. Addie starts apologizing and her mother says who are you? Addie doesn't know what's going on. She tries to say it's me, but she tropes as she tries to say her name. Her father comes out to see what's happening and recoils when she calls for him. Her mother says she's mad and they force her out of the house. She then visits Estelle who doesn't know if she is a stranger or a spirit. Addie explains what happened and asks Estelle how to fix it. Estelle turns back into her house. Addie knocks again and Estelle comes back to the door having forgotten her once more. Addie tries to call Luke again to get out of the deal but he won't appear. Because there's nothing left for her in her hometown, she makes her way to Paris. She walks, she hitches rides and she steals food starting to learn the rules of her curse and how she can survive. One time she gets caught stealing from a stable and a stable hand comes after her. He attacks her with a knife which she manages to turn on him before escaping. She gets away and he forgets her and both of their wounds heal. She discovers yet another way in which she can't make a mark. When she gets to Paris she finds an inn where the owner forces her to pay for a week up front. Of course by the next day she has been forgotten and is kicked out penniless. She tries stealing food and then selling her body at the docks but each action she takes only secures the next meal the next night of shelter. She begins to tire and one day she falls asleep on the street. She wakes up in the dark, pressed down by a cold damp weight and surrounded by the smell of rot. For a moment she wonders if she is dead. She pushes up and breaks through the shapes on top of her and climbs into the light. It's only as she moves that she feels the bodies around her, the tangle of another person's hair, the bones under their waxy skin. She tears herself free and lunges out of the cart terrified. Then Luke shows up. He asks if she is done, if she is ready to surrender. How long can she go on like this? Addie is tempted. Her untethered life has been so much harder than she imagined over the past weeks and months but she refuses. She can't have given up her life for just a few weeks of pain. She'll survive, she'll find a way. We jump forward a few years to find that Addie has found a rhythm. She is now a talented thief and seductress. She can find enough food and a bed for the night. More importantly, she has acquired a set of men's clothes and enjoys more freedom than she ever enjoyed as a woman. The illusion isn't perfect. She needs to stay in the shadows and avoid getting too close to others but it's enough. She's starting to really experience what Paris has to offer. One night she bumps into a young man called Remy. He apologizes and realises she is a woman. He's intrigued by her disguise and they begin to banter. He takes her to a café and for once she has someone who's in on her secret. Someone who doesn't treat her as just another warm body but someone who recognises her intelligence and talks to her about books and bolt hair. She thinks Remy Laurent is laughter bottled into skin. It spills out of him at every turn. They head to Montmartre and picnic in front of the Sacre-Cœur and she tells him as much of her story as she can within the bounds of her curse. She goes home with him and for the first time she feels no reluctance, no dread, only a kind of nervous thrill and the tension in the air is laced with breathless hunger. The next morning she wakes up with him warm and sleeping beside her. He wakes, his face open and warm but as he fully wakes up a shadow sweeps over him and he is flustered by the sight of a stranger in his bed. She dresses as fast as she can and turns back before she leaves wanting to see his eyes one last time only to find him looking down away as he presses three coins into her hand. She leaves and Luke returns. This is a different pain to last time. The last time he visited her she was struggling to survive starving and freezing even though her body never showed any signs of it. Now her heart is broken just a little. She saw what her life could have been only to be reminded that any dream will only ever last for a day or until someone closes the door on her. He asks if she's had enough if she's ready to surrender. She wonders if she should. She feels like she'll never have another night as perfect as the last one. Never again will she have that same joy and hope and lightness because the morning after will always be in the back of her mind. But even as her heart aches she thinks of all the things she has left to experience. She's barely scratched the surface of what the world has to offer and she says no. Addy continues. She teaches herself to read and she sneaks into galleries and mansions to view fine art. She sleeps on her own when she can with others when she wants company. She even starts making a game of the morning after sometimes seeing how awkward she can make it sometimes seeing how quickly she can make them comfortable and warm once more until one morning when she wakes up to find Matteo an Italian artist at the foot of the bed sketching her. She's shocked she can't leave a mark but it looks like others can. So she decides that this is the way she'll be remembered. No one will know her name but she'll exist in paintings and songs and sculptures. She begins to see herself as a muse and seeks out artists as she travels and explores. She wonders if Luke has ever considered this loophole. Years maybe decades later she visits the National Gallery in London. She spends weeks there wandering from room to room feasting on the paintings and the portraits the sculptures and the tapestries and she counts the pieces she has touched including one by Matteo from years earlier. How clever you are she hears a voice behind her. She turns around and sees Luke standing there staring at the painting. There is something new in his eyes as he looks at the painting. Usually when he visits her she is at her weakest and his eyes are bright with the glee of a predator about to pounce on its prey. Now there is a small switch to his mouth. He is thoughtful, amused, maybe even surprised. He has known countless humans throughout the ages and it's very rare for him to be surprised. They spar. He threatens to destroy her marks and she says she'll make more. He mentions that they are not so different that he too serves artists. Now in the book there is this scene in the National Gallery and afterwards he takes her to see Beethoven who he made a deal with and he takes Beethoven's soul. In my version I prefer to save that for later just because I feel like that makes the scene go back and forth a little bit because they can have the bonding of where she's made a mark. She's outsmarted him in some way maybe he's gained a little bit of respect for her so that's a sign of the relationship moving forward but then he shows her like how he eats someone's soul and then it's like oh well we've gone back to square one like we're back where you're this dark evil thing and I need to fight you so it's sort of like there's like there are these two good scenes smushed right together so there's no forward momentum so the way I've done it is I've got this National Gallery scene here and we're going to save that eating the soul for later when I feel like it will have more of an impact. Over the next few years it becomes a competition rather than visiting her to ask her to surrender Luke visits her and they exchange their tallies. How many artists have used Adi as their muse and how many artists have called on Luke to make a deal? He usually wins his not bound by the limitations of space or the time required to travel great distances but he is impressed by her reach her ability to make such an impression in a single encounter. As they fall into a camaraderie Adi wonders if he is as cursed as she if he wants her to keep resisting him so he has someone to remember him. We jump forward to Poland in 1940 after the German invasion. Adi has been seeing an artist for weeks though he doesn't know it. Each time she provides a little more inspiration for the piece he is working on and every time they return to his apartment and he shows her the piece he says they must have met in another life that it reminds him of her. One night they are woken in a raid when the soldiers are there to seize his art they restrain the artist and ask who Adi is but of course he doesn't remember her. She is imprisoned at first she thinks that maybe they'll see her the next day and realize they don't remember her clearly it's a mistake but it doesn't matter that they will forget her face it does not matter because these soldiers do not care about remembering. Here all the faces are strange and foreign and nameless and if she doesn't get out she's going to disappear. After weeks in the prison she eventually gives in and calls Luke using the wooden ring he enchanted. She asks him to free her he takes her into his arms and they appear in Boston where the world is safe. In the book she was in a prison in occupied France and the fact that she was in France was an awkward but the fact that there was this random scene from World War II was very awkward it almost felt like Schwab had just put the scene in there so World War II was referenced in some way and also so Luke could say that he doesn't support the Nazis which was actually conversation in the book. The idea was also that she was supposed to be some sort of spy for the resistance but to me that makes no sense because no one remembers her so if she shows up as an anonymous person why is someone automatically going to trust her? Like I feel like she needs to build up some cred so the whole scene felt really odd to me. I thought that if we wanted to keep it in World War II because of Addy's relationship with artists it would make sense to link it to how the Nazis plundered a lot of art and Poland was one of the places where they did steal a lot of art so I thought we'll put it in Poland she'll be in a relationship with an artist and she'll get caught that way. Having said that this doesn't need to be in World War II at all the main reason for this scene is that she's in prison it's the first time she actively calls Luke and it's the first time like he almost selflessly helps her he doesn't taunt her he just he helps her get out of a sticky situation and in my version this is going to be the start of their romantic relationship. They arrive in Boston it has been several decades since they last saw each other and she's missed him although she doesn't say it and they kiss and this is where we get all the Schwab's beautiful language about how he tastes like the air at night like far off wood smoke like the forest and like home they get together and they have a period of euphoria they go to plays they visit galleries they eat at fine restaurants and now it's different to last time when they were tallying up their score of artists there's also not this caden house taunting that they're always used to be they continue to talk about artists though and when they see people in the street or in bars or in restaurants they try to predict what someone's preferred method or instrument or craft is they imagine what art they could inspire in each person Luke asks her why she is so fascinated with humans when she is no longer one of them you move among them like a ghost he says you cannot live like them you cannot love like them you cannot belong with them you belong with me then he gives her the house in New Orleans and for the first time in 250 years she is able to have a home one with spaces to be filled adi wants to stay to christen the house but he says there will be time there will always be time and for once she doesn't dread the idea of forever for once the days and nights don't drag but race ahead he tells her to go home saying that he has work to do for once she follows him he visits the garden of a local artist someone whose work received critical acclaim over the past few years and adi watches through a gap in the fence the man asks for more time holding his music to his chest he isn't ready yet he begs luke to make another deal the time for deals is done luke says then he unfolds the black hair rises from his face climbing through the air like weeds and his skin ripples and splits and what spills out is not a man it's a monster it is a god it is the night itself and something else something she has never seen something she cannot bear to look at something older than the dark surrender luke says the man continues begging and the monster plunges its hand into his chest and pulls out his soul adi's eyes are locked on the bloom of light in the shadow's hand jagged and unsteady and before she can study the ribbons of color curling on its surface before she can wonder at the images coiling inside the darkness closes his fingers around the soul and it crackles through him like lightning and plunges out of sight adi runs home desperate to get there before luke arrives when he returns later that evening he puts his arms around her and she remembers the way he reached into the artist's chest and she thinks back to all of the artists they talked about all their games and competitions from a hundred years before adi doesn't tell him what she saw but he senses something is off and feels her growing distant she wonders where he goes when he's not with her she wonders how many souls he has taken and she wonders what they are for and this is the reason why i didn't want to cover the soul being eaten earlier because i feel like it's much more powerful now after they've developed this camaraderie and this relationship it's more of a it's almost more of a betrayal now for her to see it than it would have been earlier when they were still when they were still enemies they are at home one evening and adi wonders if this is really love she asks if luke loves her and he says he does she says then he would let her go and he says he can't break the deal but perhaps he could bend it i can make it better he murmurs all you have to do is surrender adi remembers luke saying the word to her over the years she remembers him saying it to the artist she thinks of all the other souls and she is angry she's a fool for thinking it meant peace instead of war surrender she snarls she accuses him of trying to trick her then there is an instant when she thinks she might be wrong a fraction of the moment when luke looks wounded and confused and she wonders if he meant only what he said now this is something i really liked from the book because it implies that luke has genuine feelings for adi it's not just a game of control it's he's not just in it to get her soul at some point the problem is we don't really return to this like the rest of the book when luke comes back it's always implied that no he just wants to control her he just wants to consume her which seems it odd with that moment of being wounded and confused and i feel like the ending of the book completely ignores any genuine relationship they might have had so i'm highlighting this now because i'm ending it slightly differently and i want to highlight that i do think there is a genuine connection there so they fight knocking over candles and lamps and she only leaves when the house is going up in flames and he is burning inside 40 years later and it has been 300 years since adi was cursed she hasn't seen luke since the fire we see that she has returned to the old rhythm of her life moss skilled at navigating her curse than ever before she wakes up in bed next to toby who doesn't remember her even though she has been seeing him for weeks she has been watching him at gigs flirting with him at the bar after his set and then playing the piano with him in his apartment helping him to write a song piece by piece we follow her for a day she goes into a clothing store where she tries on a new outfit in the dressing room and leaves in new clothes the shop assistant having forgotten her as soon as the door to the dressing room closed she uses an excuse to get into a movie theater and then stays to watch the next film she goes into the bar to watch toby again but decides not to meet him tonight instead she goes to an apartment belonging to an actor she met in the past knowing he is away reflecting on how they met and how quiet it is without him she also thinks about luke and wonders what he is doing the next day she visits a bookshop called the last word she picks up the odyssey in greek and leaves the store with it only for the boy from the store henry to follow her out telling her she needs to pay they chat and he eventually lets her leave adi goes to a building in the village for the night remembering sam the girl she met there they had a two month affair although for sam it was only one day and sam painted adi in an abstract painting of stars adi goes to the rooftop to read her book and sam comes out with some friends sam comes to talk to her flirting with the same line she's always used the next day adi returns to the bookshop and sees henry at the counter she tells him she'd like to return the book he tells her he remembers her from the day before the first person to remember her in 300 years she wants to cling to him to hold on to the first person to remember her but he asks her to leave she gets to the door and has to sit on the stairs leading up to them trying to process what has just happened he comes out and asks what she is doing and she asks if she can buy him a coffee to apologize for the book they go out for the coffee and talk about the book henry doesn't understand how she thought she'd get away with it and adi doesn't understand how he remembered he comments on her freckles looking like stars and he asks what she sees when she looks at him she says i see someone who cares perhaps too much who feels too much i see someone lost and hungry the kind of person who feels like they're wasting away in a world full of food because they can't decide what they want he stares at her and she knows she's too close to the truth she worries she's ruined it but then he asks her out for food they stay together for hours eating drinking and when he's ready to go home he says he wants to see her again she can't wait the time between thursday night and saturday afternoon feels like a chasm when saturday comes he still remembers her and they go to a speakeasy a games arcade a movie and then a club in a disused subway station she notices that he's impatient and never seems to sit still they head home and make love and he says her name over and over the first person to say it since she got cursed other than luke she wakes in the morning to him making her breakfast and they make their next date after he leaves she explores his apartment finding a watch that points to just past six even though it's 9 30 in the morning that night they get dinner and he realizes he has a party with friends he invites her and she says yes even though she knows his friends won't remember her they go and have fun that everyone heads to the roof and adi leaves in a panic knowing that as soon as the door closes she will be forgotten henry follows her out and they return to his apartment the next morning his friend robbie comes by and doesn't remember her and adi has to tell henry the truth about the deal she made with luke he then surprises her by sharing that he also made a deal so rather than having chapters in henry's point of view in this section like the actual book i'm going to keep it in adi's just because it feels strange to only have one little part of the book that has another point of view added and i also feel like it is possible for henry to convey what he was experiencing and what he went through through conversation so henry tells her about his fiance leaving him and how he felt like he was going through life having his heart broken again and again he said that he couldn't anymore and when luke appeared and asked him what he wanted he said he wanted to be loved he told her what it was like the next day how everyone was enamored with him everyone saw him as what they wanted him to be rather than what he was and they loved him for it he tells her about how he went back home to see his parents and for once he wasn't a disappointment they were proud of him and how even though he knew it wasn't real it still felt so good adi realizes that their curses worked together she thinks luke made a mistake and she's thrilled to think that they've outsmarted him somehow they fall into a rhythm of exploring the city together adi lives with henry and shares her story she meets his friends for the first time several times and she masters the first impression through this time though we also start to see adi getting restless she is impatient with henry at times he seems slow almost childish in his thinking and understanding she still wants to be remembered but she misses being challenged she remembers what luke said about her not being human anymore and she wonders if he was right if she can't love like them after a few months it's the anniversary of when she was cursed by luke and henry says that he loves her adi wonders if this is love this gentle thing if it is meant to be this soft this kind the difference between heat and warmth passion and contentment i love you too she says she wants it to be true so the piece about love here is from the original book but the piece about her getting impatient with henry is new and when i read it i thought the love piece was interesting because you know she said she wanted it to be true which implies that she doesn't really love henry she just loves that he remembers her and that's where i thought schwab was going and i also thought that was interesting how it linked to conversation she and luke had about her not being human anymore and being too distant from them given that she's lived for so long in the actual book this piece of love isn't really addressed and it sort of goes from here to him being the love of her life which was a bit frustrating so in my version i thought it would make sense for her to start getting impatient with henry because she is a woman who has lived 300 years she has a lot of intelligence a lot of experience i'm sure she sees patterns in human behavior really easily um i'm sure yeah i'm sure she just has a perspective that he can't understand because he's 28 so i imagine that after the novelty of someone remembering her ways of henry would seem quite juvenile to her and that would be frustrating i also think it might be hard to love someone who's so distant to you and what you've experienced then later that evening so same evening that henry said he loved her and she wondered if she loved him back luke appears something in her loosens at the sound of his voice the way it always has something at the center of her unwinds release without relief because she has waited of course she has waited held her breath in dread as much as hope now it rushes from her lungs luke asks henry if he's counting his life in days or if he's begun to measure it in hours addy realizes that henry hasn't told her the whole truth about his deal luke leaves and henry finally reveals that he asked to be loved but it was only for a year and that the watch he wears has gone from half past six to half past ten and it won't turn again once it passes midnight addy calls luke using the ring he gave her years ago and demands that he undoes the deal he says if she spends a night with him and she persuades him he'll consider it so in the original he tries to whine and dine her they reminisce she argues that the relationship was worth it um even if henry dies and this seems at odds with what we just saw which was that she wasn't sure if she loved him especially given that it's actually the same day and i think this is one of the areas where going back and forth in the timeline was a bit of a weakness because even though it was the same day in chronological time there was quite a bit that happened because it was so spread out due to the bits in the past so i thought maybe schwab and the editor thought there had been more time for the relationship to develop when there hadn't been so because of this i don't think she suddenly magically loves him and he's suddenly the love of her life i feel like it's more than she wants to undo the deal because henry's a good person and he doesn't deserve to die in a month and i think that's enough not everything needs to be about romantic love so they go on their date and luke reveals that he was the one to orchestrate henry's deal to line up with addy's to demonstrate that her desire to be loved to be remembered wasn't worth as much as she thought in the original she argues with him about this and sort of really latches on to know his worth at his my love in my version she realizes that he is right and it might have been enough 300 years ago to meet someone like henry but now she can't love henry the way he deserves and he can't truly understand her and what she's experienced because even if she goes through the events it's very different talking through 300 years of events with him to having lived that much time however she argues with luke that doesn't change the fact that he doesn't deserve to die luke says henry made the deal and this is when addy finally asks what are the deals for this is something that's not discussed in the book so what are the deals for why does why does luke need these souls and luke reveals it's not about lust or hunger or any crime or urge it's not because he's cruel or he wants to destroy people it's not about power even it's about balance people who come to him ask for unnatural things addy wanted limitless untethered freedom henry wanted to be loved unconditionally by everyone badehoven wanted superhuman talent and inspiration they wanted things that no one else has things that you could argue are not humanly possible things that are simply not available to everyone and to have these extreme desires fulfilled there is a cost like everything and he can't simply grant wishes without getting paid at some point it's not possible and addy realizes that there's nothing she can do then it's not him being malicious or him being greedy it's the balance of the universe luke returns her to henry and she discovers it's been a week and he only has 30 days left to live together they try to make these the best days of his life he sees his friends he says his goodbyes and he writes addy's story on the last day they go up to the rooftop where henry was preparing to jump on the night he met luke one year earlier they go up there and they wait for luke to arrive and this is when addy tells henry that she made another deal we go back in time a few days to a conversation with luke where she says she will be his for as long as he wants her by his side if he agrees to annul henry's deal and he accepts we come back to the present and addy disappears leaving henry alone but he still remembers her and he decides to publish her story a couple of years later we see addy at a bookshop looking at the book that tells her story on the dedication page there are three small words i remember you luke comes up behind her and she sets the book down with a smile contented how her chapter with henry ended and satisfied with the mark she's left on the world she takes luke's hand and they walk off into the darkness you'll see that this is the same sequence of events almost entirely from when she meets henry the big difference to the original is that at the end addy had this in a monologue about how she only made the deal with luke for as long as he wanted her so for therefore she was going to make his life so miserable he would decide to get rid of her and this didn't sit well with me just because it seemed like schwab was making her defiant for the sake of being defiant and that attitude seemed really immature it seemed like addy from 300 years ago like she hadn't grown or evolved the other thing was that i didn't feel like that honored the relationship they had and if um you know if luke had just been out for power and to devour her then fine but there was that moment earlier where he was you know lost and confused and that show he really cared about her which is a problem with the love triangle seeds were planted earlier that luke really did care about her and that she didn't really love henry and that seemed to be erased by the end where she was saying that henry was the great love of her life after six months whereas luke who'd been in her life for 300 years was just a nuisance who she needed to get rid of so that's my take on the invisible life of addy laru again the story follows the original very closely it's just the organization and the emphasis that's a bit different and i think giving a little bit more space to luke and addy's relationship and cutting some of the excess that didn't build towards the main plot so please let me know what you think if you also read the invisible life of addy laru and were left wanting more i'd also be curious to hear what some of the big changes you'd like to see are so please let me know in a comment if you like this video also let me know if you'd like to see more videos like this because i'm sure i can find more books to rant about so as always please give me a big 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