I’ve been meaning to get round to reading this for absolutely ages, I think I downloaded it when I first got the Kindle app for my phone, but it has just never jumped to the top of the list. But I figured it was about time, especially with it coming with a free audio version with my Kindle Unlimited subscription. I’ve never seen either the film version or the stage version (shocking, I know) so I was coming in completely blind to the story and what was going to happen.

What surprised me was that I just couldn’t get into it at all. It’s obviously a classic, and the fact that it has been interpreted so many times left no doubt in my mind that I’d love it, but I don’t know if I just came to the book at the wrong time or if it’s just not my cup of tea, but I couldn’t honestly say that reading the book made me happy. It’s taken me 3 months to get to the end, and even then, that was only because I was so stubborn and determined that I wasn’t going to give up. It’s very unusual for a book to take me 3 weeks to read, let alone 3 months, so that should give you an idea that it wasn’t for me.

I think maybe if I’d seen either the film or the musical first and I knew what to expect, I may have come to the book with a more open heart and mind and the book might have climbed right in to take its place next to the other classics that I love so much, but alas it wasn’t meant to be.

I wouldn’t say the book was badly written (obviously, it’s a classic), and I definitely wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it, but I found it to be quite a slow-starter and there just wasn’t enough to pique my interest and leave me desperate to know how the book would end.