The premise of the book is what initially drew my attention and captured my interest. As someone who was once a curious, inquisitive girl with a love of books and a large vocabulary, I fell in love with Esme and her work. (I’m now an adult with the same love of books and a hunger for information.) That being said, the book loses steam about halfway through, which is why it took me a while to finish it. Nothing was happening, narratively or emotionally, with the characters, so I lost interest. The final third of the novel truly drags, and the author seems to have lost steam because

she pretty much kills everyone off and makes a sixty year time jump with little context

. It’s a boring book, and it’s not a strongly written one, too. I would suggest that you only read as far as page 247 (the chapter titled December 1912). It drops off after that.