You can still get a lot out of the abridged version, or even the comic book version, or the one for kids. Just a case of getting the RIGHT one.

It's even possible to co-run a subreddit r/AReadingOfMonteCristo for an entire year and ONLY using abridged versions (on purpose) to summarize and discuss the book. I'm doing this to prove that "abridged doesn't suck" and nobody's complaining there.

Abridged gets a lot of hate because there are several poorly-done abridgements, but there are 2 excellent ones as well.