Synopsis: 

 

Addie Larue lives in seventeen hundreds’ France, with a life all planned out. Grow up, marry, raise children, die. Not many people in her village even dream of seeing a city, let alone Paris, or the world. But Addie wants to live. She wants to discover the world, she wants to see palaces and beaches and exotic animals, something both her parents find mad and dangerous. When she is forced into a marriage she does not want, she does the one thing she is told never to do. She prays to the gods who answer after dark. 

She makes the darkness an offer. she will give it her soul in return for time and freedom. But he refuses. Every deal needs a deadline. So she makes one. She tells him he can have her soul when she doesn’t want it anymore. He agrees. It is only later that she realizes that he added his own twist to it. Addie can’t be remembered. She would talk to someone, leave the room, and they would not remember her at all. She cannot say her name and she cannot write or draw or leave a mark. And so the game begins. The darkness is the only one who knows her, who comes to her each year asking if she’s ready to give up. But she is stubborn, she is not ready to give up.

 Three centuries pass, and addie is stealing a book when the boy in the bookshop catches her. He remembers her. And Addie is scared to ask how.

We follow Addie in the past and the present as she passes through a world that wipes every mark or memory she paints. 

I highly recommend this book to everyone. One of the best books I’ve ever read.

Spoiler Free:

This is definitely one of, if not the best book I’ve read all year. It’s just perfect in every way. The atmosphere it gives is great. Victoria Schwab’s writing style, as usual, was painfully beautiful. I lost count of the number of passages I highlighted (on a digital copy, don’t worry lol) and the metaphors that I had to stop and drink in.

 I related to both main characters so much. Another thing I loved about this book is how much art is included. Not just at the beginning of each part but also in the story in general. It made me want to pick up a paintbrush as soon as I closed the book. The darkness is the exact kind of villain that I love. Nuanced, but cruel, sarcastic, elegant and powerful. I definitely enjoyed the interactions between him and Addie a lot.

 The merge between contemporary and historical fiction was flawless. One minute you’re in world war one, and the next you’re in modern day new york and both are gripping and beautiful and just great.

 The one thing that this story is not though, is fast paced. It’s a story about characters above all else. I personally don’t find that an issue. I enjoyed this slow beautiful book and found it refreshing as a change from the high stakes action packed fantasies I usually read. But I can see some people starting it thinking it’s something it’s not. So here’s your warning. This story is not an adventure. It’s a poetic personal biography of a fantasy fictional character. 

In case it’s not already clear, I’d rate this book 7/5 stars. A star for every freckle on Addie’s cheeks. A star for every time this book made me bawl my eyes out (and that’s without me counting the single silent tear moments) so please, go read it. This story and this character deserve to be known to everyone in this world.

Spoiler Review:

 

This story was very very relatable to me. Addie’s fears at the beginning, before the deal have plagued me for a long time. The line about people living in the same ten meter plot hit very close to home. The scenes about going to Le Mans and feeling all that wonder then growing up and having it not ‘fit’ for her to go was just great. Then how it came full circle once she went back there after the deal but it wasn’t like she remembered. It was painfully poetic. 

 

I liked the idea of her stranger. How she drew every detail of this fictional man only for the darkness, her curse, to manifest in his form and steal his name. I also like the scene where she was praying to him and didn’t realize it was after dark until too late. How even after centuries she’s not sure if she would have called upon him if she knew. The moment when she went back to her mother after the deal broke me. I can’t imagine what it must feel like to go home and have your parents not only not recognize you but also call you a witch and kick you out. It was even worse when she lost the bird. The last thing to link her to them and to her old life.

 

This could have so easily turned into a caution tale for girls who dream of ‘too much freedom’ of too much life. I’m so glad it didn’t take that route and instead made it a story about hope and about stubbornly finding things that make you happy even if you’re cursed with something that could easily swallow you whole if you let it. One of my favorite scenes was when Addie and Luc were dining in the duchess’s house and he asked her why she doesn’t give up. Why she doesn’t just let it end. But she answers with how she saw an elephant and how she wouldn’t have if she had given up when he asked her before. I love how she took it as a challenge instead of a death sentence.

 

Another one of my favorite short stories in this, is her story line with Remi. I’m just a sucker for cute boys with big dreams and kind hearts.  It was fitting that he be the one to teach her about novels and reading. I definitely ship them together a lot and it broke my heart when he woke up the next morning and pressed those coins into her hand.

 

Estele is one of my favorite characters in the story. I loved how Addie always heard her voice in her head every time she saw something she would have disapproved of. The scene where she found the tree she planted above her grave struck by lightning was just heartbreaking (I know I’m using this word a lot but it was! There’s no other word for this but heartbreaking)

 

Which brings me to Luc. the darkness, the devil, the god of chaos. He is a lot of things but most importantly, he’s a great antagonist. I don’t really consider him a villain. There was something about him near the end that made him, ironically enough, human. The way that, whether he would admit it or not, was lonely. He was someone-or something- that no one was truly happy to see. The people who call upon him only see him two times; the first they are scared but desperate, the second they are panicked and angry. He has no one to talk to. As much as Addie, he has no constant in his life but himself, and then she came. I love how V E Schwab showed his transformation slowly. From the scene at the salon in Paris where he ruined her day, to his unscheduled visits, to him comforting her at Estelle’s grave, to him escorting her then telling her he loved her. I also love how she didn’t portray this as a love story. Not really. In the end he didn’t ‘get the girl’. Not really. She’s still hellbent on getting her freedom back. I love how she made it clear that what he felt was possession. Or at least at the beginning. By the end, during their fight in New Orleans, I truly believe that he was starting to feel something more for her. I do believe that he loved her. He just doesn’t understand yet that love means letting the other person go when they want to. I feel like if this book had a sequel (which I know sadly it will not), he could reach that stage. But then again the ending is open to interpretation. 

 

Henry’s story is great too. That fear of not being enough, that feeling of choices, especially college and career decisions, never feeling completely right, that’s something everyone can relate to (at least I think everyone can?) and the portrayal of depression in his chapters was perfect. I’ve never read something that described it as accurately as Henry’s clouds. I had a feeling there may have been some kind of deal with Luc at the beginning when he said something about the gleam in the girl in the bookshop’s eyes, then later when everyone was extra nice and enamoured by him, but I had assumed he didn’t know about it. For some reason I thought maybe someone close to him made the deal for him. And that watch had a very disturbing presence. I knew there was something wrong. I just didn’t know it would be that he’d die in two months! Two years? Maybe, but not two months! When that was revealed the anxiety made even more sense. Why he hated sitting still how he wanted to do everything and go everywhere and spend every opportunity with Addie and with his friends. I loved the progression the author showed of him loving how easy life is after the deal, then being slightly unsettled and then seeing it as a curse. 

 

His relationship with Addie was amazing. I loved every second of it. The dates were simple and beautiful, the conversation, easy and natural. I love how they never had a major breakup worthy fight (that’s something I dread in romances and romantic subplots) and I love how in the end she sacrificed her freedom to get him a second chance at life and how he published her story and had the words ‘I remember you’ on the dedication page. 

 

The ending was just perfect for me. The perfect amount of closure, the perfect amount of tears and smiles.

 

The theme of art was quite prevalent in the whole book. Addie even acknowledged that she had a thing for artists. One of my favorite lines in the book is when she figured out that she can live without food or heat or water, but she can’t live without art. Her father was a wood sculptor, she used to draw in charcoal until she had nothing left to draw on. Most of the people we meet throughout the book are painters or musicians or actors and it makes this story just brimming with color and creativity. This book made me want to pick up a paintbrush,and make something. 

 

Something else that this book had a lot of was travel. Not only around the world but even just in New York and I’m so here for it. After almost eight months of quarantine, going nowhere but the grocery store and university, reading this was like going on a trip around the world. Apparently V E Schwab had chosen half of the places in her novel as real places and the other half she made up. But I’d sure want to visit every one of them.

 

The writing style of this story was heartbreakingly beautiful. It had me stop several times just to drink in the metaphors. There were moments where this was more poetry than prose and if you know anything about me, you know that that is my favorite writing style. V E Schwab has always captured me with her writing but this is on a whole different level. Even for her. It has the kind of sentences that are beautiful in meaning and sound, in rhythm. It’s the kind of book you need to read out loud and not silently.

 

This book is absolutely perfect and unforgettable and I have a feeling that I will be talking about it for weeks to come. Definitely going to be rereading this whenever I need a calm beautiful book to get me through a hard day.