Girl in Hyacinth Blue

This is the first book of the year reading challenge, which is a mix between Kat's TBR-Challenge and PopSugar's reading challenge.
  
(I didn't have a jar so I put it in an old little tin box)
 
For this month, I had to read a book I was supposed to read in school/uni but didn't. I generally read all the books that I'm assigned at uni (because we don't get a lot) so I went for one of the optional books.The premise of this book was interesting. Each chapter is a sort of short story following the painting Girl in Hyacinth Blue and how the different owners get it or lose it. The book starts at the “present” and with each chapter, it goes back until the moment Vermeer painted the picture.As it usually happens with short stories, not every owner's story was engaging. I could connect with some of the owners but with others, the story seemed to drag. The language was quite accessible and the narrative covers several time periods so I could see why a teacher would pick this particular novel to study in class.All in all, it was a good book with an interesting idea for a plot but it sometimes felt like a chore to read it.