Invisibility by Andrea Cremer and David Levithan

“I am not solid to the world, but the world is solid to me.  The curse is its own intricately woven, often contradictory web, and I was born into it.  I am an unknowing slave to its design… It isn’t loneliness really.  Because loneliness comes from thinking you can be involved in the world, but aren’t.  Being invisible is being solitary without the potential of being anything but solitary.  So after a while, you step aside from the world.  It’s like you’re in a theater, alone in the audience, and everything else is happening on stage.”

In Invisibility by Andrea Cremer and David Levithan, Stephen has been cursed to a life of invisibility.  He was born that way and most likely he will die that way.  Why Stephen is invisible is completely hidden from him.  He has learned to accept this and after his mother’s passing he continues to go with the motion that has become his life that is until Elizabeth enters the picture.  Elizabeth Josephine is new to New York.  Leaving behind her old life is both bitter and sweet for her.  You see Elizabeth left her home town with her mother and brother, after her brother was attacked back home.  Once her father split, so did they and into the world of curses and spell seekers. Elizabeth can see Stephen.  She is the only one that has ever laid eyes on him, and there is a good reason why: she is a spell-seeker. 

Here is my problem with this book: did it seem like my first paragraph was confusing?  There is a good reason for that, this book is confusing.  At first I thought it was just this story that flip flops from Stephen and Elizabeth’s perspectives, but then magic was introduced.  Don’t get me wrong, you really can’t have an invisible character without a little Sci-Fi or supernatural, but really?  Nothing about this book explained that magic existed.  I feel like the world this book was surrounded in was not very well fleshed out.  Perhaps fleshing this out would have created more pages to read, but really I think it was necessary.  On top of being confused about this world in this book, Elizabeth is perhaps the most annoying character in the whole book.  This would be fine, because there is always one in every book, but she makes for almost 50% of the perspective of this book. 

I really wanted to like this book, because I really like Levithan, I just couldn’t.  It was okay and I liked Stephen (he was a deeper character than Elizabeth).  I really did not like the end; it felt like there could be a second book if the authors choose to do one.  It just felt as though nothing was really resolved. 

Thanks Edelweiss!

2/5 stars.