Dating : Book Review: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue is more than what meets the eye.

I read a Reddit post complaining about their disappointment in “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.” He disliked the romance between Addie and Henry, which was far too unbelievable. The author could have done a much better job, he implies.

I read several Goodreads reviews that were horrified and revolted by the “villain” Luc. The reviews echo one another, with a pattern of the same keywords repeated — “toxic,” “abusive,” “unhealthy” Addie only had feelings for him because he is the only one that remembers her, they scorn.

They are right and wrong at the same time. V. E. Schwab does an incredible job masterfully and beautifully blending genre and literary fiction in “The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue.” A novel that’s been in the works for 10 years, it features a compelling plotline wrapped in intricate meaning. Schwab has carefully and meticulously crafted her story and if one doesn’t look close enough, you’ll miss how she challenges readers to question their preconceived notions of love and life.

It’s easy to take the plotline at face value: a simple and basic plot pattern as old as time. There is a girl, a good guy and a bad guy. But the concept and storytelling is far too riveting and thought-provoking, the farthest thing from simple, for that to be true.‘Nothing is all good or all bad,’ [Addie] says. ‘Life is so much messier than that.’” Schwab brings to life an unreliable narrator who doesn’t know her own heart, and only by looking deeper can you uncover a complex and dynamic story.

When Addie and Luc meet for the first time, she is running away from her wedding. She does not want to be a wife. She does not want to be normal, to be like her best friend Isabelle who is “sweet and kind and utterly incurious.” She does not want to do what her parents desperately want her to. No, what Addie wants is to live — truly live, for herself. And so, a bargain is struck.

It has been a hard and lonely life, she says, and a wonderful one, too. She has lived through wars, and fought in them, witnessed revolution and rebirth. She has left her mark on a thousand works of art, like a thumbprint in the bottom of a drying bowl. She has seen marvels, and gone mad, has danced in snowbanks and frozen to death along the Seine. She fell in love with the darkness many times, fell in love with a human once.

For 300 years, Addie has hated Luc for the curse he brought upon her. We see firsthand the devastating pain she endures and the lengths she goes to survive: lying, stealing, selling her body. She does whatever it takes, and despite Luc’s countless offers to surrender and give up, she continues on one step at a time. In 300 years, she’s withstood war, explored new lands, sailed the seas, danced in Paris, and even fallen in love with a green-eyed stranger.

If you could do it again,” he says, “would you still make the deal?”

And Addie says yes.

She’s experienced heartbreaking pain and seen unimaginable beauty. Life is composed of the good and bad, the novel preaches. And suddenly, you begin to wonder if Luc’s “curse” was ever really a curse. One cannot truly live without experiencing the lowest of lows and highest of highs that life has to offer. You begin to wonder if Luc was ever the villain she paints him to be.

“Henry Strauss wanted to die. You wanted to live. You are nothing alike.”

She meets a boy who remembers her, finally remembers her. She’s never been remembered before, not by someone other than Luc. Henry is Addie’s polar opposite. He is soft, gentle, and simple. He is endearingly unambitious and lives to please others.

“Two years of drinking less for her, and staying clean for her, dressing up for her, and buying things he couldn’t afford, because he wanted to make her smile, wanted to make her happy.”

When Henry’s proposal is turned down, he’s given up. He wishes for death and bargains to be “enough.” Enough for his family, his friends, for Tabitha. While Henry runs towards marriage, Addie runs from it, quite literally. She is bold, brash, selfish, and hungry. She abandons her family, whose only wish was for her to wed, and instead chooses a world of unknowns because Addilene LaRue only lives for herself. Even if the choice was not entirely hers to make, readers don’t get the sense that she regrets it. In fact, she seems to miss and mention Estele, the old woman who teaches her how to talk to gods, far more than her family.

“Henry Strauss is thoughtful, and kind, she wants to say. He is clever, and bright, gentle, and warm.

He is everything you’re not”

She describes Henry as thoughtful, kind, gentle, warm, and “contentment.” He is everything Luc is not. Luc, who is conniving, immoral, and only cares for himself. Luc and Addie’s dynamic is multifaceted and deeply intriguing, complicated by centuries of knowing one another. In fact, they are the only ones who truly know one another. He challenges her, angers her, and kisses her like no one ever has or will.

He is “toxic” and “unhealthy.” He is not a kind, soft lover. No, he is passion, fire, and heat. Schwab emphasizes this with multiple parallels between Luc and brightness. He is heavily symbolized and compared to heat and the sun. It makes sense–Addie has always preferred Summer. Even his namesake in Latin means “bringer of light.” Sure, it’s ironic but ultimately we learn one of the strongest themes of the book is how darkness and brightness go hand in hand, like yin and yang.

“I am the one who sees kindling and coaxes it to flame. The nurturer of all human potential.”

“I am a god of promise, Adeline”

“My Adeline,” he says, kissing her hair. “You have changed more than you think.”

He pushes Adilene and tortures her. However, there are moments where Luc acts out of character. He repeatedly shows his appreciation for art and music and his dislike for war and chaos. He’s helped her without asking for anything in return, traveled the world with her, shown her wonders, and has always been there for her. He coaxes change and growth. Whenever she is on the edge of giving up, he shows up under the guise of tormenting her, when in the reality he is the force that eases her loneliness and her reason to keep fighting.

“He has given her a gift,” she says. “The darkness has given her the one thing she truly needs: an enemy.” Every time he taunts and tries to break her, she only comes back stronger. It is that strength that gives way to beauty, joy, and awe.

“What nonsense,” he says. “It is because I love you that I won’t. Love is hungry. Love is selfish.”

If Luc truly hated her, he would have left her all alone these years without reason or company to live. He would have left her to drive herself into pity and despair. No, Luc does not hate her. He confesses to her, “I have always wanted you.” He tells her he loves her. And maybe that’s what love is. Love, like life, is not rainbows and butterflies and softness. It is passion and pain; it is pushing someone to be the best version of themselves. It’s caring about someone so much that you’re willing to be painted as the villain so she may be the heroine. Even if it does not seem like it, he fulfills his promise and ultimately gives Addie and Henry what they desire.

“I love you,” [Henry] says, and Addie 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.

[Henry and her] do not fit together perfectly. He was not made for her the way Luc was — but this is better, because he is real, and kind, and human, and he remembers.

Henry’s romance with Addie isn’t believable –it’s true– but it’s not meant to be. Addie desperately clings to her old life multiple times throughout the novel. She can’t help returning to Villon and vehemently claims she is still human, even if she realizes eventually she is not. Not anymore. She has trouble leaving behind the concepts human society has hardwired into her. Love, society tells her, should be selfless and simple, and because Luc is not “real” or “human” he cannot grasp the concept of love. Luc occupies her thoughts and makes her feel alive; she loves him but can’t fully leave those preconceived notions behind. Instead, here is Henry who is safe and easy. Henry makes sense. She should have remembered — Addilene LaRue isn’t someone who plays by the rules.

“When the truth is so much easier than that — I put Henry in your path. I gave him to you, wrapped and ribboned like a gift.”

“Why?” she asks, throat closing around the word. “Why would you do that?”

“Because it’s what you wanted. You were so set upon your need for love, you could not see beyond it. I gave you this, I gave you him, so you could see that love was not worth the space you held for it. The space you kept from me.”

A chance to catch her breath. She does not know if it was love, or simply a reprieve. If contentment can compete with passion, if warmth will ever be as strong as heat.

But it was a gift.

Not a game, or a war, not a battle of wills.

Just a gift.

Time, and memory, like lovers in a fable.

Gifts are a motif used again and again throughout the novel. We won’t get into that, for it will be far too long of an essay, but keep that in mind. Luc sets the entire thing up for Addilene. She thinks he is being cruel when in reality he is willing to give her up to another man, even if temporary, to give her what she thinks she wants. He does so in an attempt to challenge her notions of love. He knows Addilene better than she knows herself. She doesn’t need simplicity or softness. She doesn’t need love, at least not this utterly ordinary and human definition of it. Luc knows Addilene LaRue is the farthest thing from ordinary.

No,” he snaps. “I did it to show you. To make you understand. You put them on such a pedestal, but humans are brief and pale and so is their love. It is shallow, it does not last. You long for human love, but you are not human, Adeline. You haven’t been for centuries. You have no place with them. You belong with me.”

And this time, Addie has to win.

One piece of her story that she can save. Henry. So Addie makes her gambit.

Luc knows Henry Strauss is simply an experience. An event. A blip in their centuries of living. He gives this to her because it is the one thing she has yet to experience. It’s evident she doesn’t save Henry’s life because she loves him, she does so to win the game between her and Luc. At the end of the day, it’s always been her and Luc. It will always be about her and Luc — the reckoning forces that withstand time.

“Even if everyone you met remembered,” Luc says, “I would still know you best.”

She can tell herself, as she has told him, that she only missed being seen, or missed the force of his attention, the intoxication of his presence — but it is more than that. She missed him the way someone might miss the sun in winter, though they still dread its heat. She missed the sound of his voice, the knowing in his touch, the flint-on-stone friction of their conversations, the way they fit together.

Every scene with Henry isn’t described as a love of the person Henry is; it’s a fascination of experiencing something new — being remembered. She, along with countless Goodreads reviews, believe she only loves Luc because he is all she has. He is the only one who can remember her. Luc defies that by granting her Henry to show to her that even if someone else remembers her, he will always know her best. Even if she loves someone else, their love will always shine brighter, and longer.

“This is need. And need is painful but patient. Do you hear me, Adeline? I need you. As you need me. I love you, as you love me.”

“Have you ever had something you love, and hate, but can’t bear to get rid of?”

Henry and her could never last, even if Luc wasn’t in the picture. She would tire of him and become a duller version of herself. That’s not to say it’s not meaningful. In a lifetime, you will fall in love over and over again. It’s a part of life, some people are not meant to stay in your life forever. Some people stay just long enough to teach you the lessons you need to learn in your journey. Rather, something stronger than love, more persistent and essential, is need.

“ideas are so much wilder than memories, so much faster to take root”

“I suppose,” he goes on slowly, “there is something to the idea of company.”

“A fraction of a moment when Luc looks wounded and confused, and she wonders if he meant only what he said, if, if —

But then, it is over.

The hurt falls from his face and it passes into shadow, the effect as smooth as a cloud across the sun. A grim smile plays across his lips.”

She unknowingly teaches him a lesson as well. Addie, and the readers, begin to see the vulnerability and loneliness in Luc. It is his reluctance to show that vulnerability that impedes their love. See, in actuality, they are not so different, Luc and Addie. Two pieces cut from the same fabric. Yin and Yang. They are both dreamers who marvel the world and are hungry for life. Two stubborn individuals who will do whatever it takes to get what they want — even ignore one another for decades, despite their longing, in order to prove a point. Two twin fire flames burning brightly and setting everything in their path ablaze — as dangerous as it is beautiful. Luc is her match and her home.

“He tastes like the forest, and somehow, impossibly, like home.”

“So Addie says nothing of the new game, the new rules, the new battle that’s begun.

She only smiles, and sets the book back on its shelf.

And follows him out into the dark.”

The story, for us, ends with Addie’s scheme to trick Luc. On the surface, one might believe the ending foretells a future of hatred. She will never love him, she vows. That would be a reasonable and simple ending. Schwab doesn’t do simple. A closer look reveals that the ending perfectly encompasses their relationship.

Luc and Addie will never be content with just a happily ever after. It’s the games and challenges that keep them alive and fuel their fire. Sure, it isn’t an ending that offers closure or finality. Addie has yet to realize Luc is not the villain she falsely believes him to be or understand what “love” is to her. Addie needs to learn to let go of being human and Luc needs to learn how to be more human, more vulnerable. But Addie and Luc do not need finality or closure. They have never and will never end. They thrive in the unknown and the up’s and down’s that is life. They are magnets who break apart just to inevitably come back to one another, again and again. Their love is timeless–a constant in an ever-changing world. She doesn’t see him yet, not in the way he sees her, but that’s all right. They have an eternity to figure it out.