[SPOILER WARNING FOR THE INVISIBLE LIFE OF ADDIE LARUE]
I really enjoyed the book and thought it was written very well, and I adored Luc and his dynamic with Addie. But I can’t help but be a little bit confused about why the author decided to end the book like that, especially since it’s supposed to be a stand-alone.
You’d think a satisfying end to Addie’s personal arc would be her at peace at being remembered, then taking Luc’s hand and disappearing with him into the night (or something along those lines). But instead, Addie informs us of her new vendetta against him and how she’s going to spend the rest of eternity trying to make him hate her so her soul goes free and the book ends RIGHT THERE. We’re not getting a sequel so why would you end the book with a curveball like that? That’s an entirely new plot-thread that was literally introduced on the last 2 pages.
She says that she’s going to prove that Luc is “incapable of love”, and then 2 sentences later she says that she’s going to “break his heart.” WHICH ONE IS IT, ADDIE? Those statements are contradictory as hell if she thinks he has no heart to break. I think the author made the ending for them unanswered and up-to-interpretation so that readers could interpret it however they wanted but idk, I was kind of rooting for them to find a sort of peace in each other as a couple which doesn’t seem to happen at the end of the book.
The book beats us over the head with the metaphor that Addie’s freckles are a ‘constellation of stars’ across her face. I’ve seen a lot of people complain that the recurring metaphor was meaningless and superficial, but while reading the book I realised that Luc is literal DARKNESS and the NIGHT. His true form is just a yawning, terrifying empty void of black. And Addie is constantly compared to stars and one artist painted a portrait of stars to represent her. This motif is supposed to mean that Addie is the constellation of stars that both foil and complete Luc’s empty, dark night, that she’s the one who brings light to his existence. How am I not supposed to ship Addie x Luc when the book drills the star motif into our heads like that! I refuse to believe that the man who represents the night sky and tells the woman who represents the stars that he loves her didn’t genuinely mean it.
My personal interpretation is that they’ll play some more cat-and-mouse games through the centuries but ultimately will come together one day. I do believe Luc loves Addie, though she believes he doesn’t love her because you have to be willing to let someone go if you love them. Luc’s love may not be pure and selfless, but I do believe it is love.
He’s a dark entity, a monster of the night that is thousands/millions of years old. His love is different and exists with him on a different scale of feeling than that of a normal human. He’s also likely horrifically starved and greedy for true affection. Addie is probably the only true companion he’s had in forever. Remember how angry and defensive he became when she claimed that they were alike and both lonely? And then decades later he concedes that she may have been right. It’s because he’s been in denial about being lonely for his entire existence, but Addie challenges him on that and has him realise that there may be something more to his existence than taking souls.
He tells her that he saw the elephant in Paris and how it reminded him of one of their earliest conversations. Seeing an elephant in Paris would be nothing to an immortal like him, but it shows that Addie has had an effect on him and his outlook in life, given some meaning to a mundane thing that he otherwise would not have cared about. Addie is living in his mind RENT-FREE at this point. Luc also shows compassion for her in many vital moments, like saving her from the war camp and from the streets during the revolution, later on even helping her with smaller things like escaping the ticket inspector.
These acts of kindness do not erase his bad deeds, but they do show him to be a morally grey character who has grown to care for Addie’s wellbeing and safety. It would have been in his best interests to let her get tortured so she’d give up her immortality earlier, but he still saved her. She’s the only being in the world who has seen his true form, she accepts him for who and what he is. She has seen him when he was cruel and when he was merciful, she gave him a name and a face that he has kept as his chosen form for 300 years (HE EVEN USED THAT FORM FOR HENRY’S DEAL!)
You can’t tell me Luc didn’t have any kind of special attachment or affection for Addie. The fact that he answers to the name she gave him, that he has chosen to wear the face of the imaginary lover that Addie carefully sketched and dreamed of over and over in her youth.
Addie accuses him of wearing the face of her imaginary lover because he is trying to manipulate and taunt her (which may have been true at the start), but that doesn’t explain why he would wear it to see Henry too, and the countless other humans he has probably dealt with in the past 300 years. It’s almost like he and Addie both gave and took from each other, that Addie gave him a name, face and human connection—that she took this old god, a void of darkness that swallows souls, and made it care for her enough to make it try to be a man for her.
I know it’s a stand-alone novel but I would love something along the lines of a short spin-off full of snapshots about Addie and Luc post-ending (like How The King of Elfhame Learned to Hate Stories). An epilogue of sorts to tie up loose ends and give us some closure, see what Addie and Luc end up as, to let us see Addie find her peace and be truly happy. I feel like the author tried so hard to make a statement that Addie is a strong independent woman who is still fighting that we didn’t actually get to see her be happy.
Her final moments of the book, where she should be feeling content and at peace about everyone knowing her story, and she should be shown getting ready to move on with her life and leave behind her fixation of being remembered. But it gets tainted by this sudden spike of revenge and malice that ends the story on a negative note and ends up feeling kind of sad tbh.....
