Finished: The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue (Schwab) In July of 1714, Addie LaRue is a 23 year old young woman who lives in the small French village of Villon with her parents, who are insisting that she finally get married to a young man from the town. Addie has never wanted to live the "standard" life of get married, have children and never set eyes on anything past her village. She longs to be free to do as she pleases, and not belong to anyone...to live life to the fullest. On the evening of the wedding, she runs away to the forest and prays to the gods to please intervene so that she will not have to get married. She forgets a cardinal rule about praying to the gods, though...never pray to the gods after dark, for you'll get a dark god. Sure enough, the devil himself answers her calling and materializes in the form of a handsome young man. Addie can feel his dark presence, though. She begs him to help her be free to live how she wants to, free of belonging to a man. The devil, who she calls Luc, grants her wish...but it will cost her her soul. When she's tired of living her life, she will owe the devil her soul. The deal is struck, but little does Addie know that everything is about to change dramatically. When Addie runs home to her parents, neither of them recognizes her. It's as if she was never their child. She also goes to see her best friend, who also doesn't recognize her. And it gets worse....anyone who she DOES meet, forgets her the minute they leave her company, even if just for a moment. It's as if she doesn't exist. She can live in the moment, but no one remembers her. And, she can't say her name...it won't come from her mouth, so she must always use a different name. She can't write or even draw in the sand. She can also not be hurt without healing instantly, or die. This life of Addie's goes on for 300 years. She makes her way to Paris and nearly freezes to death and starves to death, and she feels all the symptoms of those realities, but her body is just fine. Once a year on the anniversary of their deal, Luc appears and asks if she's ready to surrender and give him her soul. Stubborn Addie never agrees! The story goes back and forth between the 1700's, 1800's and 1900's, as we see Addie "meet" the same people over and over again. She finds a way to leave an impression of herself by having one night stands with artists who paint her portrait. Of course, they fall for her in that one night, and then all over again the next night, and on and on, until she finally moves on, and they've created a piece of art about a woman they think was only in their dreams. Addie manages to travel the world and survives through several wars in her 300 years. She also develops a strangely co-dependent relationship with Luc, and comes to look forward to his visits, since he's the only being who actually knows who she is and that she exists. Sometimes he tortures her and goes years, maybe decades, without visiting her, only to then come and say "surrender?" In 2014, she is living in New York in her usual style. She can't hold a job, so she steals the food she needs. She stays in people's cottages or apartments while they're gone. She can sneak into a building and a doorman will forget he saw her the next instant. One day, Addie goes into a book store and steals a book to read. All she has to do is make it around the corner running and the book store owner who is chasing her will forget why he's running. The young book seller, Henry, is exasperated when he actually catches up to her, and seeing her desperation, just tells her to keep the book and he heads back to the store. The next day Addie takes the book back to the book store, as she usually does, and she expects Henry to look at her as if he's never met her, but instead he says "You! What are you doing here? You've got some nerve returning here after stealing that book." Addie is stunned, shocked, elated, all at once. Someone actually remembers her! She can't believe it and is certain that any moment the bubble will burst, but it doesn't! Addie and Henry begin seeing each other and develop feelings for each other. He finally wants Addie to meet his friends, but she knows what will happen if one of them leaves the table and then comes back. Sure enough, it happens and the friend who leaves the table and comes back says "well, who have we got here Henry?" even though he'd just met Addie in front of the other friend. Addie flees the table and Henry chases after her. She finally has to tell Henry the whole truth, but she doesn't think Henry will believe a word. However, what Addie doesn't know is that Henry had made his own deal with the devil a few month before. He'd been experiencing severe depression on and off for years, and had been rejected in his recent marriage proposal to his girlfriend when he found himself on the rooftop of the building about to jump off and end his life. However, the long hand of the devil reached out his hand and saved him. He gave Henry what he wanted most of all. In exchange for his soul, he'd give Henry one year of being loved and cherished by everyone, instead of ridiculed and rejected. Everyone Henry meets gets foggy-eyed and sees only good in him....they see him as they want him to be. Even his disapproving family is suddenly very loving. His friends already loved him, so they aren't any different, but strangers are. When he meets Addie, though, her eyes don't cloud over either. When she tells him her story about her deal with the devil, he tells Addie about his deal as well. They can't believe they each have a deal, but now realize this is why Henry can remember Addie. Henry fails to tell Addie about the time limit on his life though. As the year anniversary of Henry's deal approaches, he finally tells Addie and she can't accept it. She calls Luc to come and begs him to cancel Henry's deal. As we've known for a long time now, Luc doesn't really want Addie's soul, because then she'll be dead. What he really wants is for Addie to be with him and only him all the time. Addie makes a deal with Luc that she'll stay with him as long as he wants her by his side if he releases Henry from his deal. When Henry's last minute ticks down, Addie tells him what she's done and she begins to fade away. He begs her not to go, but it's too late. She tells him to remember her always and she's gone. Henry goes on to write a book based on all the stories of her life that Addie told him in their months together. He'd written them all in journals for her since she couldn't write anything. A  year after they're parted, Addie sees Henry's book in the book store "The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue", and it's her story. He's told her story. In the dedication line he says simply. "I remember you." As Luc comes upon Addie as she's reading, she goes with him as usual, but thinks to herself.....she learned from the master and used very careful wording in her deal. She knows there will come a time that Luc gets tired of her, even if it's just a fight in anger, and then she'll be free of their deal. Until then, she'll have all the patience she needs because she's got all the time in the world. This was a very good book, but took me awhile to read because it was pretty long and went back to the past quite a bit to show us Addie's trials and her relationship dealing with Luc. I preferred the story more when it was just Addie and Henry. A good book though! :-) 

 Finished: Where The Crawdads Sing (Owens) Beautifully written book about a young girl growing up alone in the marshland of North Carolina in the 1960's, deserted by her entire family by the time she is ten, left to fend for herself, living off the land, her only friends the birds and other animals of the marsh, and a nearby town who considers her to be dirty and feral and calls her the Marsh Girl. Kya is only six when her mother walks out on her abusive father, leaving her and her older siblings, never to return. As the siblings leave the abusive shack one by one, no one takes Kya with them, leaving her to deal with their father and eek out a living as best she can. When her father finally leaves for good as well, Kya starts driving his small boat, knowing all the ins and outs of the marshes leading to the town, figures out how to dig for mussels, and then sell them to the man who owns the gas store, Jumpin'. Jumpin' and his wife, Mabel, live in the "colored" section of town and are the only town people who are kind to Kya...until she meets Tate. Tate is a boy who is 3 or 4 years older, who had been a friend of Jodie's, the brother she was closest to. Tate is a friendly, compassionate young boy who ends up teaching Kya to read and write. They are both in sync with the marshes and as they grow older, their deep friendship blossoms into first love. Before Tate goes off to college, her promises Kya that he will be back, but then he breaks that promise. In her heartbreak, Kya ends up having a relationship with the richest boy in town, the popular quarterback, Chase. Chase pursues her and charms her and eventually tells her that he wants to build her a house and marry her someday. He basically gets her to trust him before he plans a trip for them to a motel where she loses her virginity to him. Though he keeps seeing her, Kya doesn't realize that he brags about his sex with the Marsh Girl to his buddies in town, and that he has a pretty blonde girlfriend. When she eventually sees an engagement announcement for Chase and his girlfriend in the town paper, she realizes that she's been made a fool of, and worse, left once again. When he's done with college, Tate comes back to be a wildlife biologist in the area and goes to see Kya to beg her forgiveness and explain why he never came back. She won't have anything to do with him, but when he sees her detailed drawings and descriptions of the intricate marsh wildlife, he convinces her to at least let him submit some of her work to a publisher since no books exist about the coastal wildlife like what she could create. Kya agrees, and though she won't see Tate, she goes on to have more than one successful book! The money from the books allows her to update the inside of the cabin and put some money aside. As the story opens, it has advanced to the year 1969 and the body of Chase has been found disfigured on the ground near the marsh fire tower. He has seemingly been pushed from the tower floor and the small town sheriff has a murder on his hands. Eventually, Kya is put on trial for his murder, but I won't give away what happens. She does end up with Tate and her brother Jodie, who has come back, rooting for her, as well as Jumpin', Mabel and her lawyer, who comes out of retirement just to defend her. There is so much beautiful prose in the book, and such detailed descriptions of the wildlife, and poetry is smattered throughout. I could feel Kya's pain every time she was shunned and every time she was deserted by someone she loved, but I can't begin to imagine the isolation and loneliness of being left at such a young age. The ending was a very nice surprise as the murderer of Chase was revealed. :-)

Finished: The Midnight Library (Haig) When a despondent Nora Seed attempts to take her own life, she finds herself in the midnight library, a place where she wavers between life and death, with a guide to help her choose any book she wants to see what her life could have been (and still could be) if she'd made a simple different choice at any one turn. What if she'd kept up with swimming for her dad and made the Olympics? What if she'd stayed in the band with her brother and become a famous singer? What if she had married the man who she'd broken off her engagement with? This is a very well written book about reexamining the choices you've made in life, your regrets, your "could-have-beens", and finding out that maybe, just maybe, you were on the right path all along. A bit predictable, with shades of It's A Wonderful Life, but an uplifting read when you see that there is always someone whose life you may have affected without even knowing it and that loving yourself goes a long way towards creating a happy life for yourself. :-)