At the beginning of the novel, Addie LaRue, the novel’s protagonist, sells her soul to Luc, a demonic entity, in exchange for immortality. However, Addie soon learns that her immortality dooms her to a life of invisibility: everyone she meets immediately forgets her, and so Addie is therefore incapable of leaving a mark on the world. For 300 years, Addie lives a lonely and loveless life. She has various sexual relationships and sometimes continues seeing the same person for months at a time, but there’s never much intimacy or emotional investment in these relationships, as her partners believe that every night they spend with Addie is their first night with her. Everything changes in 2014, though, when Addie meets Henry Strauss. Henry, a bookstore employee in his late 20s, has also sold his soul to Luc, allowing him to remember Addie while others cannot. Because of this, Addie and Henry form an instant connection that quickly develops into a romance. Toward the end of the novel, though, Luc informs Addie that her and Henry’s meeting was no accident—in fact, Luc arranged for their paths to cross to show Addie, who has longed for love and human connection her entire life, that love isn’t worth the suffering and heartache it creates. Indeed, it’s not long after Addie becomes emotionally attached to Henry that she learns the full truth of Henry’s pact with Luc: Henry’s promised his soul to Luc in exchange for one year of being loved and desired by everyone he meets. After one year, Luc will collect Henry’s soul, and Henry will die. By the time Addie learns of Henry’s imminent doom, Henry has just over one month to live. The revelation devastates Addie, and she condemns Luc for orchestrating such a cruel plot. Yet Luc’s plot does not have his desired outcome. Luc had anticipated that falling in love with Henry only to tragically lose him would turn Addie against love. Ultimately, though, Addie declares that she would put herself through all the heartache and anguish of losing Henry again if it meant she could experience the joy and meaningfulness of loving him again, too. The novel thus suggests that the joy and beauty of human connection are worth the risk of pain, suffering, and heartache that opening one’s heart to others invites.
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Love and Vulnerability Quotes in The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
She hates this part. She shouldn’t have lingered. Should have been out of sight as well as out of mind, but there’s always that nagging hope that this time, it will be different, that this time, they will remember.
Her mother wishes she was more like Isabelle Therault, sweet and kind and utterly incurious, content to keep her eyes down upon her knitting instead of looking up at clouds, instead of wondering what’s around the bend, over the hills.
But Adeline does not know how to be like Isabelle.
She does not want to be like Isabelle.
She wants only to go to Le Mans, and once there, to watch the people and see the art all around, and taste the food, and discover things she hasn’t heard of yet.
Estele’s face darkens. “The old gods may be great, but they are neither kind nor merciful. They are fickle, unsteady as moonlight on water, or shadows in a storm. If you insist on calling them, take heed: be careful what you ask for, be willing to pay the price.” She leans over Adeline, casting her in shadow. “And no matter how desperate or dire, never pray to the gods that answer after dark.”
The rise isn’t worth the fall.
The first shot may have been fired back in Villon, when he stole her life along with her soul, but this, this, is the beginning of the war.
His heart has a draft.
It lets in light.
It lets in storms.
It lets in everything.
That’s the only unsettling part, really—their eyes. The fog that winds through them, thickening to frost, to ice. A constant reminder that this new life isn’t exactly normal, isn’t entirely real.
“You can’t make people love you, Hen. If it’s not a choice, it isn’t real.”
He glances over his shoulder, a coy grin playing over his lips. “For all her talk of freedom, she was so lonely in the end.” Addie shakes her head. “No.” “You should have been here with her,” he says. “Should have eased her pain when she was ill. Should have laid her down to rest. You owed her that.” Addie draws back as if struck. “You were so selfish, Adeline. And because of you, she died alone.”
“I can show you,” he purrs, letting the light settle in his palm. “Say the word, and I will lay your own soul bare before you. Surrender, and I promise, the last thing you see will be the truth.”
There it is again.
One time salt, and the next honey, and each designed to cover poison. Addie looks at the ring, lets herself linger on it one last time, and then forces her gaze up past the light to meet the dark.
“You know,” she says, “I think I’d rather live and wonder.”
“Put it on, and I will come.” Luc leans back in his chair, the night breeze blowing through those raven curls. “There,” he says. “Now we are even.”
Whenever Addie feels herself forgetting, she presses her ear to his bare chest and listens for the drum of life, the drawing of breath, and hears only the woods at night, the quiet hush of summer. A reminder that he is a lie, that his face and his flesh are simply a disguise. That he is not human, and this is not love.
“What is real to you, Adeline? Since my love counts for nothing?”
“You are not capable of love.”
He scowls, his eyes flashing emerald. “Because I am not human? Because I do not wither and die?”
“No,” she says, drawing back her hand. “You are not capable of love because you cannot understand what it is to care for someone else more than yourself. If you loved me, you would have let me go by now.”
Luc flicks his fingers. “What nonsense,” he says. “It is because I love you that I won’t. Love is hungry. Love is selfish.”
“You are thinking of possession.” He shrugs. “Are they so different? I have seen what humans do to things they love.”
Addie shakes her head. “You see only flaws and faults, weaknesses to be exploited. But humans are messy, Luc. That is the wonder of them. They live and love and make mistakes, and they feel so much.
“Nothing is all good or all bad,” she says. “Life is so much messier than that.”
And there in the dark, he asks if it was really worth it.
Were the instants of joy worth the stretches of sorrow?
Were the moments of beauty worth the years of pain?
And she turns her head, and looks at him, and says, “Always.”
