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Comments Off on The Beginning The Beginning
At least, I’m hoping this is the beginning. I’ve finished at least four books this year that I have yet to review–not counting the audiobook or two that I still have time to finish–and I’d like not to leave a stack of reviews undone as we head into 2020. My mother-in-law has my children–because she is wonderful and because it’s my hubby’s and my anniversary–and my hubby has to work at least most of the day, so I’m free to focus on trying to finish some of the things. SO. Review #1:
Katherine Rundell’s Rooftoppers has been on my radar since 2015, when there was a spectacular reading challenge available online and Britt and I were looking for an author that was younger than both of us to count for one of the requirements. I only recently discovered, however, that it was available on audio, and I finished listening to it a few days before Christmas. (I think. It’s all a little hazy now. And yes, I realize that 2015 is now almost 5 years ago, but I had a baby that year, and didn’t finish the challenge, but the book sounded too good to just bail on.)
It was thoroughly delightful.
Seriously. I loved it. And the narrator was excellent, making the audio a lovely choice. Imagine a book that feels a bit like it was written by Eva Ibbotson in her young adult style of writing, influenced by Francis Hodgson Burnett but with a touch more whimsy AND a touch more (surprisingly gritty) tension; imagine it to be about a 1-year-old found floating in a cello case after a shipwreck and cared for by an eccentric but charming English bachelor; imagine hard-hearted child welfare people and a desperate search for a possibly-alive mother over the rooftops of Paris, led by a small band of ‘children’ called rooftoppers; and imagine a Requiem played in double time as the key to it all. If that sounds appealing–and seriously, it should–then this is absolutely a book you should read. (Or listen to, because again, the fabulous narrator!) I would have loved it as a child; I did love it as an adult.
I hope you feel the same way.