Good morning and happy second day of Joe Biden’s presidency.
Though I’m not thrilled with our incoming administration, yesterday’s inauguration felt like a celebration of the end of the Trump years. And what better way to celebrate than with JLo’s This Land is Your Land x Let’s Get Loud remix?
My personal favorite part was the moment I searched “Ella Emhoff queer” and realized that at least 50% of the queer women on Twitter did the same exact thing.
The queer part remains unconfirmed, but what we do know is that she’s a master of the eyebrow wag, and has both impeccable taste in coats and a tattoo of a cow. Also, I would very much like to watch this movie:
Anyway, here’s a book rec.
— Becca
The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab
Fiction, October 2020
In 1714 France, Addie LaRue is 23 years old and about to be married off to an older man. She runs off into the woods and, in an act of desperation, makes a deal with a god (or devil?) named Luc for her freedom. She gets the freedom she seeks, along with immortality as long as she likes, but with one catch: no one she meets will be able to remember her.
For the next 300 years, Addie’s relationships are limited to brief, hours-long flings. Even when she’s asked to spend the night, the person she went home with always forgets her by morning and wakes up confused by the woman in their bed.
It’s a lonely existence, and that loneliness is only broken up once per year when Luc stops by to ask if she’s ready to hold up her end of their deal by surrendering her soul.
This all changes in 2014, when a bookseller named Henry miraculously remembers her. They’re both hot and sad and desperately in need of connection, and quickly fall into a whirlwind romance.
But, of course, their relationship isn’t set up to be an easy one. Addie is perpetually 23 and saddled with a curse, while Henry has plenty of shit of his own to deal with.
What’s thankfully never a problem, though, is that they’re both queer. Henry is “attracted to a person first and their gender second,” and Addie has flings with multiple genders over her 300+ years. It’s a non-issue for everyone involved. Nice!
I don’t want to say too much more about the plot, but I will say that this is not entirely a plot-driven novel. There’s a lot of meditation on loneliness, on wanting, on what it means to be remembered. And there are a whole lot of references to the fact that Addie has seven freckles on her face. Seriously, dozens. It gets a bit repetitive.
Still, it’s a well-constructed story, and the last few pages gave me that pre-cry feeling in the back of my throat. Not full-on tears, but some genuine emotion for fictional characters—which I personally think is a sign of a solid book.
Queer points:
+7 for two main characters who are both bi/pan
+9 for a lovelorn theatre gay who has his heart broken all over again each time his ex boyfriend shows up at a party with Addie LaRue
Buy it from your favorite bookstore on Bookshop