More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Adeline’s mother and father kneel there twice a week, cross themselves and say their blessings and speak of God. Adeline is twelve now, so she does, too. But she prays the way her father turns loaves of bread upright, the way her mother licks her thumb to collect stray flakes of salt.
Love this description and characterisation of youthful disregard, the rote of ritual + foreshadowing of what's to come.
“Well?” asks the shadow, holding out his arm. Perhaps she is lonelier than she would say. Perhaps an enemy’s company is still better than none.
Please let them get together...
“You look like someone I used to know.” “Someone you liked, I hope.” “Not really.” He shoots her a look of mock affront, and Addie almost laughs. “It was more complicated than that.” “Love, then?” She shakes her head. “No . . .” But her delivery is slower, less emphatic. “But he was very nice to look at.”
She CLEARLY LOVES LUC
She does not bother with the laces or the buckles. Does not turn toward him again, not until she feels the warmth of his hand on her shoulder, the touch almost gentle, and thinks, desperately, wildly, that maybe—maybe—there is a way to salvage this. She turns, hoping to meet his eyes, only to find him looking down, away, as he presses three coins into her hand. And everything goes cold. Payment.
DESTROYED
And Addie thinks that Luc would love her, wonders for an instant if he’s been down here since she’d found it. She breathes in as if she’d be able to smell the darkness, like smoke, on the air. But Addie wills herself to stop, empties her head of him, makes space instead for the boy beside her, bouncing in time with the beat.
SEE SHE LOVES LUC!
They do not fit together perfectly. He was not made for her the way Luc was—but this is better, because he is real, and kind, and human, and he remembers.
Reading through my highlights, I'm now even more pissed off about the end of this book. More Addie-in-love-with-Luc content. Stop lying to yourself, sis. LUC REMEMBERS YOU you dumb bitch. ffs. Henry is garbage.
It has been four years without a visit. Four years of holding her breath, and though she will never admit it, the sight of him is like coming up for air. A terrible, chest-opening relief. As much as she hates this shadow, this god, this monster in his stolen flesh, he is still the only one who remembers her at all.
Jesus wept. She loves Luc so much. Like not even halfway.
Six years, and relief is the wrong word for what Addie feels at the sight of him, and yet, it is the closest one. The sensation of a weight set down, a breath expelled, a body sighing in relief. There is no pleasure in it, beyond the simple, physical release—the relief of trading the unknown for the certain.
Like this is the only thing that sort of reads like she doesn't love Luc. But—also—she's lying to herself because she previously described the sight of him as like "coming up for air". This is a THEME.
“Adeline.” She hates the way it makes her feel to hear him say her name, hates the way she leans into the word like a body seeking shelter from a storm. “Luc.”
I'm just mad now.
That even if Luc meant to abandon her, stranding her there in Florence, in doing so he broke a kind of seal. In yet another, maddening way, he forced her free.
What a dumb bitch. He loves you and wants you to eXpeRiENcE ThINgs.
Once, Addie tears her gaze from the players on the stage, only to see that Luc is watching her instead of them. And there it is again, that peculiar shade of green. Not coy, or chiding, not cruel, but pleased. She will realize later that this is the first night he does not ask for her surrender. The first time he makes no mention of her soul.
You know when you start completely empathising with the "villain" of the story and thinking the FMC and MMC are garbage and deserve the worst? Yes. That's this bit here.
Luc lifts his glass. “Happy anniversary, my Adeline.” She looks at him, lips parting with their usual retort, but then stops short. If she is his—then by now he must be hers as well. “Happy anniversary, my Luc,” she answers, just to see the face he’ll make. She is rewarded with a raised brow, the crooked upturn of his mouth, the green of his eyes shifting in surprise.
What a dumb bitch.
His body wraps around hers like a blanket, like a breeze, like the night itself. But tonight, he does not feel like a thing of shadow and smoke. Tonight, his arms are solid against her skin. His voice slides through her hair. “Even if everyone you met remembered,” Luc says, “I would still know you best.”
The emotional gaslighting of this book has me enraged.
But now, he kisses her like someone tasting poison. Cautious, questing, almost afraid.
Luc. My heart. I hate Addie. How could you do Luc so dirty.
