Literary Life | Rooftoppers

Anything that has something to do with rooftops and Paris I am always going to find scintillating. I'm a total cliché but Paris is amazing and I hope one day to visit the city again. Rooftoppers took me there but it felt very different to the Paris I visited.

In Rooftoppers we follow Sophie, the young ward of Charles Maxim, both of whom were on board the Queen Mary before it unfortunately sank. Also on board was Sophie's mother and as Sophie grows up, she becomes determined to find her mother who she believes is still alive. And as Charles is often saying, never ignore a possibility. Living with Charles brings its own problems, thanks to the jobsworth that is Miss Eliot, who is determined to remove Sophie from Charles' charge so she can become a "proper lady". Without giving too much away, Sophie finds a potential address for her mother and whilst trying to avoid the authorities, the two slip away to Paris to begin their search.

While Charles tackles the Parisian police, Sophie finds a set of rooftoppers, Matteo being the most prominent. He teaches Sophie all manner of tricks of the trade and before long they're flying over Paris with scuffed knees and dirty palms. There was also, unsurprisingly, a lot of blood. No really, Katherine Rundell's descriptions of these children scraping various body parts is probably the biggest recurring theme in the book! Which I guess you would expect if you were jumping across rooftops in Paris at night. 

I'm not entirely sure what age this book was intended for if I'm honest. It felt a little like a children's book but distinctly different from a young adult novel, though I feel like that's the intended age range. The ending for me wasn't full enough and I felt a little put out for poor Charles who, in the latter half of the book, seemed to disappear for whole chapters at a time. I also found (because I'm a cynical boring pretend-adult) that Matteo was a bit petulant and so my enjoyment of the later chapters suffered a little because of that. But it's a book that takes place (partially) in Paris, so it's hard not to like it. It's also a light, easy read that fills those sleepless nights with ease. Ah, Paris. 

And though I never really jumped across Parisian rooftops, I did take some pretty pictures on them two years ago this exact weekend! Talk about timing.