Book overview
Rating: 5/5
Genre: urban fantasy, romance
Official synopsis: France, 1714: in a moment of desperation, a young woman makes a Faustian bargain to live forever and is cursed to be forgotten by everyone she meets.
Thus begins the extraordinary life of Addie LaRue, and a dazzling adventure that will play out across centuries and continents, across history and art, as a young woman learns how far she will go to leave her mark on the world.
But everything changes when, after nearly 300 years, Addie stumbles across a young man in a hidden bookstore and he remembers her name.
Trigger warnings (highlight or copy to read - they are written in white): death, starvation, prostitution, uncomfortable sex, depression, anxiety, attempted suicide, manipulation, toxic relationships
Book review
Firstly, this review will be much shorter than all of my other reviews because I don’t know how much I can say so I will keep everything as vague as possible.
I am a massive V.E. Schwab fan, I loved Vicious, A Darker Shade of Magic and this Savage Song so much. They are some of my favourite books of all time and really shaped my tastes as a reader. I basically grew up with her books because I started reading ADSOM when I was 15 and just never stopped reading her books (I am 19 now, by the way). I was so excited to get my hands on this e-ARC because, if it isn’t obvious by now, V.E. Schwab is one of my favourite authors of all time. I love her writing style and her concepts, they are some of the most creative things I have seen. Her writing is beautiful without being too flowery, and also easily digestible to most reader level without compromising the complexity of the plot.
This book has all of those things and more. This book was absolutely amazing. I adore it. I’m still trying to decide where it will go on my list of favourites but currently it is sitting at number 8 on my top 10 books of all time.
The characters in this book are all so charming whilst being incredibly flawed. I feel like I really relate to all of them and all of their mistakes seemed so realistic. The problem with a lot of books is that the mistakes made by the MC are just straight up really stupid and they end up making the MC incredibly unlikeable, this does not do that. The characters are flawed, and stupid, but also realistic, relatable and seem so real.
I could not predict the ending of this book. I don’t know if I’m just stupid, which to be honest, is very possible, but I couldn’t see it coming at all. I really thought something else was going to happen and it’s a bit frustrating that I have to be this vague but I think it’s a good ending. I can see it being very divisive but I personally really enjoyed it. The plot of this book had me on the edge of my seat because I just couldn't predict it or see where it was going.
Something to keep in mind is that this book is actually more centred around romance than action or fantasy which might throw some people off because usually Schwab’s books are quite fantastical and full of magic, but I thought she really pulled this off. I am not even a big fan of romance, I tend to really dislike romances especially YA romances, I am much more of a fantasy fan but this book establishes and develops the characters so well that I ended up loving the romance too.
However, one of the main drawbacks of this book is the pacing. The first part of the book is very slow (about 100 or so pages for me, but it’s just up to wherever part 2 is) but I still enjoyed reading it, and once I got past that bit I really loved it. Looking back, I think this slow start was the right move too because we got to know the characters.
Overall, I would highly recommend this book to V.E Schwab fans or anyone who is interested in the premise of this book. It is a beautifully written novel with flawed but lovable characters and a plot that I could not predict. I loved this book so much and I hope other people will too when it comes out on October 6th 2020.