Reviews - The Count of Monte Cristo

You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.

8.92k reviews for:

The Count of Monte Cristo

Alexandre Dumas, Alexandre Dumas

4.32 AVERAGE

rkingston's review against another edition

5.0

adventurous emotional hopeful inspiring mysterious reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

lila_sophia's review against another edition

5.0

Thrilling and inspiring in some way

dbatten4x22's review against another edition

5.0

Excellent story. But read the abridged version. There's no reason for it to be 1200 pages.
Read first in high school. Relistened to audio version in 2020.

logitora's review against another edition

4.25

adventurous emotional hopeful tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

libbith220's review against another edition

5.0

A classic for a reason, holy shit!!! I listened to the audiobook narrated by John Lee and he was sooooo good, I'm gonna have to check out other things he's done. This is the kind of book I wish I had read for a class or in a book group because there are just so many things going on: thematically, emotionally, politically, etc. Yes it's in an extremely long book, but honestly all parts felt necessary; in order to get that emotional payoff, every element needed to build over time to be convincing and impactful. Almost every named character ended up being important in some way, sometimes popping up way later. I'll definitely need to revisit this at some point (probably in actual text form) so I can appreciate what, at the time, seemed to be random tangents. I couldn't help but cry at the end from the culmination of such a rich story, and also just because it was ending—I'm alway sad when I finish a beloved series, and this long book felt the same way :')

I was really convinced throughout this that we were going to lose Edmond Dantes to his quest for revenge, but we never did; as the Count of Monte Cristo he still had occasional moments of emotion that would break through his facade, which lent to the credibility of the resolution at the end. I was also convinced that this had to end tragically, and while there was certainly some tragedy along the way, it was rather hopeful at the very end.

Beyond the story itself, I found the prose of this very captivating—although it was funny how often Dumas just used the phrase "impossible to describe" in place of any actual adjectives (like at least try, dude!). I can tell this was originally serialized because all of the chapters were well sectioned and paced, and it was fun to guess the direction of each from their titles.

I have so many more notes on this but they don't fit nicely into a review, so I'll just hold on to them until I find someone to yap about them with! (however I do have to give a shout out to lesbian icon Eugenie, what a baddie)