YMMV / The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue

• Alternative Character Interpretation: Just about everyone in the cast can be subject to this.
  • Is Addie just a poor victim of a malicious force beyond her comprehension? Or is she a Manipulative Bastard playing a cosmic chess game with a god, increasingly divorced from the humanity she came from? Luc seems to think the latter, and Addie does have her moments; she at one point is willing to damn a perfectly innocent person at random to save Henry.
  • Is Luc an evil being with no real empathy with or feelings towards humanity, or is Luc a genuinely loving (if inhuman) figure with genuine emotional needs? It doesn't help that Luc argues both at various points.
  • Does Addie actually love Henry, or is it just a brief infatuation brought on by relief at having someone, anyone, able to remember her? Addie herself questions this, the chapter they say "I love you" is titled nothing less than Don't Mistake This For Love. And it's kind of eyebrow-raising how much Addie puts emphasis on Henry being able to remember her when pleading with Luc over any feelings of love, even her last words to him are making him promise to remember her.
  • Does Addie feel any love for Luc? The ending would seem to say no at first glance, but Addie also refers to their relationship in New Orleans as the happiest time of her life.
  • Henry's willingness to use others' hypnotized perceptions of him for sex is bound to cause mixed reactions.
  • Is Henry's sister Muriel the only really supportive member of his family, or is she an enabling drug-dealer who directly causes Henry's deal with Luc?
  • Is Henry's family as rejecting and demanding as they seem, or is Henry's perception of them warped by his depression?
  • Does Robbie really still love Henry, or is it just an effect of Henry's curse? Henry seems to think it's the latter, but Bea seems to think it pre-dates the events of the plot.
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The plot briefly stops off in 1944, where Addie and Luc stop to confirm to each other that they both hate Nazis. No matter how immoral or amoral Luc may be, he reminds the reader that he's anti-war and certainly anti-Nazi. This doesn't really do anything to advance the story.
• Cry for the Devil: It's hard not to sympathize with Luc at points. Even Addie comes to believe he's genuinely suffering in isolation. And when he finally does get what he wants, that being Addie's companionship, she's scheming to "break his heart."
• Do Not Do This Cool Thing: Sure, Addie suffers a lot, but she also witnesses and inspires some of history's greatest events and works of art, lives in complete freedom, answers to nobody, can steal whatever she wants without consequences, and can infinitely retry any social interaction until she gets what she wants.
• Fan-Preferred Couple: Odds are you'll find more fan content for Addie with Luc than Addie with Henry. While Henry is seen as a sympathetic and nuanced portrayal of someone with depression, for a lot of fans he's not too interesting outside of that and his relationship with Addie largely hinges around the novelty of his curse overriding hers, while the Mind Game Ship between Addie and the otherworldly being who cursed her is often perceived as more complex and dynamic.
• Fridge Horror: A person exists who will follow you for months, never tell you anything true about herself, learn your deepest secrets, and use what she learned to manipulate you into having sex with her. And you will never remember consenting.
• Genius Bonus: What opera does Luc take Addie to? None other than Wagner's famous Tristan und Isolde, whose themes are extremely relevant to that portion of the plot.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • Remy is extremely memorable and is often mentioned in reviews, despite only appearing once.
  • In an In-Universe sense, Addie is one of these to everyone she inspires, as nobody will remember her for a subsequent appearance.
• Realism-Induced Horror: In a story with supernatural suffering, damnation, fantastical journeys through time, and the like, Henry's depression is thoroughly realistic.
• Ship-to-Ship Combat: A rather bizarre version in this fandom, due to it being deliberately ambiguous what each of three central character's really are feeling. It's less so much that the Addie/Luc and Addie/Henry shippers are arguing with each other online, it's more that they're trying to decipher what's really going on with all three of them.
• Spiritual Successor: Some have pointed out the novel could be seen as a Darker and Edgier take on The Age of Adaline, a 2015 movie about a woman who doesn't age and struggles to form lasting relationships (though in this movie the cause of the protagonist's immortality is never fully explained and she doesn't also have to deal with being constantly forgotten; Adaline has the opposite problem of trying to prevent people knowing her secret). The present-day events of both stories take place in 2014 and the names of the protagonists are nearly identical (Addie's full name is Adeline).

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