I have been looking forward to reading this book since it came out, since Kostova's The Historian is one of my favorites. I've read it twice - something I can't say for any other piece of fiction in the past ten or maybe even twenty years, and listening to the audiobook for the second time while on our trip. This second book had a similar writing style, but the subject matter didn't match it nearly as well. It went on and on, and while there was an interesting story, I had to really concentrate to ignore the unrealistic way the story was stitched together. The Historian held together as a narrative of letters and journals in part because they were from prior eras, so I couldn't say for sure whether academics in the 1930's or 1950's really would have written this way.
But here the author postulates contemporary characters deciding to tell their story to an interviewer in person and instead choosing to send letters periodically - and then the purported letters are written at a letter of description and intimate detail that contradicts the context in which they were written. Again, the older letters I have no problem with, but in a contemporary setting, it just doesn't work. But perhaps my biggest problem was the way the entire plot came together at the very end - the book went from a slow putter to pedal through the firewall in a couple of pages, and I had trouble figuring out what was happening. I reread some of the pages at the end over and over and still couldn't make out exactly what was happening.
I'm not saying the book isn't well-written or a good read - just that I saw some things in it that to me detracted from it being as good as The Historian. And it may well be that the subject matter just didn't lend itself to Kostova's dreamy, descriptive writing style as well as the first book.