October 22, 2020
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
Addie LaRue is a girl who always wanted more than life in her small French village offered. Born in the late 17th century, in a moment of desperation, she makes a bargain with a dark god, gaining immortality but cursed by the god to be forgotten by everyone she knows or meets. But all of that changes 300 years later, when she meets a young man in a bookstore and he remembers who she is.
This was an interesting take on the Faustian bargain with the devil, bartering one's soul for eternal life. Characters throughout fiction have made such deals, including Faust and Dorian Gray. Although at devastated at first at everything she has lost, Addie gradually learns what she has gained from her pact. We experience history through her eyes, from Paris in the early 18th century through World War II, up to the present day.
To be honest, I got a little bored and felt this could have been 50 or so pages shorter - the reader doesn't need to know every little facet of Addie's life as an immortal. But fantasy enthusiasts will find it entertaining and fresh.
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