Books like The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
What should you read after V.E. Schwab’s novel? It depends on what you loved most about it.
- V.E. Schwab
- 2020
- Historical fantasy
What did you love about it?
Choosing one reorders everything below.
Best books to read after The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue
Ranked overall. Pick what you loved above to re-rank them.
Best overall matchThe Night Circus
Erin Morgenstern
Two immortals playing a long game through a beautiful, doomed spectacle. Morgenstern writes the exact atmosphere Schwab is reaching for, and reaches it more often.
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- A bargain with a dark god
- Three hundred years of history
- Slower and less plotted
Great matchCirce
Madeline Miller
An immortal woman on the outside of everything, watching mortals arrive and die for three thousand years. The loneliness of not ending, done better than anywhere.
- Immortality and loneliness
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- Art as a way to leave a mark
- Greek myth, not modern history
Great matchThe Time Traveler's Wife
Audrey Niffenegger
A love affair conducted out of order, with one person always vanishing from it. Same structural ache: loving someone who cannot stay in your timeline.
- A romance with the devil
- Immortality and loneliness
- Its premise has aged awkwardly
Great matchThe Name of the Wind
Patrick Rothfuss
A man telling three hundred years of his own myth to a listener who writes it all down. If you loved Henry finally remembering, this is that impulse as a whole book.
- Art as a way to leave a mark
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- Epic fantasy, very long
Great matchThe Hazel Wood
Melissa Albert
A girl bound by a story someone else wrote about her, trying to break the terms. Sharper and eerier than Addie, with the same bargain-with-forces logic.
- A bargain with a dark god
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- Dark fairy-tale horror
Best for the proseThe Ten Thousand Doors of January
Alix E. Harrow
A girl who finds she can write doors into other worlds, in a book about who gets to author a life. Harrow's sentences do everything Schwab's are aiming at.
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- Art as a way to leave a mark
- Three hundred years of history
- Slower first hundred pages
Worth a look — with a warningThe Starless Sea
Erin Morgenstern
Morgenstern going all in on mood: doors, bees, honey and stories about stories. Ravishing to read and almost impossible to summarise afterwards.
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- A bargain with a dark god
- Plot is barely present
Great matchThe Girl Who Drank The Moon
Kelly Barnhill
A witch, a bargain and centuries of a village misremembering its own history. Gentler than Addie and unexpectedly moving about memory.
- Being forgotten by everyone
- A bargain with a dark god
- Written for younger readers
Great matchThe Golem and the Jinni
Helene Wecker
Two immortal creatures walking 1899 New York, unable to explain themselves to anyone. It nails the outsider-in-a-crowded-city loneliness Addie runs on.
- Immortality and loneliness
- Three hundred years of history
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- Two protagonists, split focus
Great matchOnce Upon a River
Diane Setterfield
A drowned girl who comes back and the village that tells three different stories about her. Setterfield writes atmosphere as thick as anything Schwab does.
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- Being forgotten by everyone
- Slow, folkloric pacing
Worth a look — with a warningJonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell
Susanna Clarke
Clarke's enormous alternate England, complete with a faerie gentleman whose bargains ruin lives. The dark-god dealings, at a thousand pages and a Victorian pace.
- A bargain with a dark god
- Three hundred years of history
- A lush, atmospheric voice
- Vast, slow, footnote-heavy
Great matchThe Witch's Daughter
Paula Brackston
An immortal witch moving through four centuries with a pursuer who never quits. The plainest structural match to Addie on this list.
- Three hundred years of history
- Immortality and loneliness
- A romance with the devil
- Prose is noticeably thinner
Great matchThe Mermaid's Daughter
Ann Claycomb
A curse handed down a family line and a singer trying to break it. Small, strange and much less known than the rest of this list.
- A bargain with a dark god
- Art as a way to leave a mark
- Pacing wobbles throughout
What should you read after The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue?
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V.E. Schwab works on several levels at once, and which book you should read next depends on which of those levels got you. For most readers the closest match is The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern — two immortals playing a long game through a beautiful, doomed spectacle. Morgenstern writes the exact atmosphere Schwab is reaching for, and reaches it more often.
If what stayed with you was immortality and loneliness, read Circe by Madeline Miller instead: an immortal woman on the outside of everything, watching mortals arrive and die for three thousand years. The loneliness of not ending, done better than anywhere. The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger is the other strong option — a love affair conducted out of order, with one person always vanishing from it. Same structural ache: loving someone who cannot stay in your timeline.
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