What is essential for a good experience reading Hunchback of Notre Dame?

I've recently decided that I am going to read The Hunchback of Notre Dame. I majored in English/Literature (so I feel comfortable trying new classics and doing some research), but I've somehow never gotten around to studying French authors. I've read Camus's The Stranger and Dumas's The Count of Monte Cristo, and that's it.

For whatever bizarre reason, I NEED to love The Hunchback of Notre Dame as a book. I've read the Wikipedia plot synopsis already to see how it differed from the Disney film, and I felt like it didn't seem like a book I'd like (but I'm not deterred because I had the same experience with Lord of the Flies and Wuthering Heights and LOVED both of them).

I know very little about French literature or the social/historical climate in France at the time this book was written (though I do understand Hugo's hopes to help preserve the Notre Dame cathedral on writing it).

For those of you who have read the book, what would you say is essential to understand, read, research, etc. in order to have a great experience with the book and really enjoy it?