The Historian - a review

Just a heads up, I really did not like this book, and have nothing good to say.

The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova is about a young-ish girl who finds a weird book in her father's study and then he starts to tell her the story of how he got it. That's really just the backstory, the main story line is really the father's life, from when he got the strange book to until the story related to that comes to an end. At the same time, there are small snippets of the main girl's -whose name I can't remember- story. And that's the first thing I hated about this book. Also there's Dracula and his history, as that is the thing the father is investigating. (I'm saying this very vaguely to avoid spoilers, though I don't know who would want to read this, but just in case.)

I hated how the story was written; it was mostly in letters. And someone telling a story. Which would have been okay, if there had been a difference in how the letters were written and how the "real" story was told. But there was nothing to differentiate the two, I totally mixed the girl and her father sometimes. And, absolutely no one can write letters from memory many years later like that - I don't even write in my diary in that much detail. It was so unrealistic I wanted to scream.

I didn't like the writing. Can't really tell what it was about it, I just didn't like it at all. Everything was told the long way, the chapters just went on and on and on. A lot of the times there were really long, boring, unnecessary parts from some historical text that was supposed to be relevant. And yeah, I get it, there was information, but I feel like it could have been told in a much more interesting way.  The writing was also really slow to read. And the book was like 700 pages which was like 400 pages too much or something. Could have been okay-ish if it had been shorter.

This book was predictable and cliché, and it tried way too hard to be good and funny and interesting, and ended up being anything but. Everything that could have been interesting was just mentioned once, shortly, and then forgotten. This was just bad. At parts I laughed because it was so bad.

So, I don't recommend this to anybody, not even my worst enemies. Do not waste your time reading this. I only read this because I can't not finish a book, and that was a problem. I could have ended after the first few chapters.

One star. If I could give negative stars, I would. This is possibly the worst book I have ever read, and that's including Fifty Shades of Grey.