A review by caity23444
Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo

4.0

The storyline to this was just amazing. I loved the disney movie, but I had no illusions going into this that the story would be anything like that. I much prefered Phoebus' character in the book because lets be real, Quasimodo and Esmerelda belong together. Also I loved the character of Claude Frollo, he was just a superb villain and I loved actually hearing about his backstory and all the hardships he faced. It just makes him that much more realistic, since in real life usually no one is just evil and Hugo definitely shows Frollo's better side. The ending was so good as well, but I won't spoil it. I only really had two problems with this book and that was just the random pieces of French scattered throughout the text with no reasoning why the translator translated everything bar these phrases. And then there's what Hugo is world renowned for, his rambles. I am sorry but this book could have been 200 pages shorter if it wasn't for his completely pointless rants. The breakdown of Parisian architecture for up until the 1800s even though the novel is set in the 1400s didn't exactly add much to the story. If the rambles weren't in it I could have definitely given this book five stars.