I'm glad I finally read this, but wouldn't say I enjoyed it. It is both groundbreaking and boring. The Monster is sympathetic, but everyone else was so underdeveloped or unbearably perfect that I found it impossible to care about them, which meant I couldn't get invested in much of the plot. The structure is fantastic, and the philosophical explorations were interesting. But, while I was ready to suspend my belief for a book such as this, it required much more suspension than I was prepared for. I went in ready to believe that Frankenstein discovered the secrets of life without explanation, but I wasn't ready to have to believe that the monster just happened to figure out how to speak like a scholar the way he did, or to navigate his way to Geneva, or to stumble upon a random boy who happened to be a member of the Frankenstein family...

I can totally see why this book is legendary, and I don't begrudge it its place in the literary cannon. But I don't think it's a perfect masterpiece as many seem to. There exist classics that hold up much better today than this one (in my opinion).