I gave Harry Potter and The Cursed Child by JK Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne a 4 out of 5 stars. I did do a vlog style review on my channel that you can check out here for my raw and initial thoughts throughout reading this book.
This book begins at the epilogue of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and focuses on Albus Severus Potter's Hogwarts experience and adventures. The live play takes five hours to show four years of Albus' life pass. The main plot centers around Albus and Harry's imperfect and volatile relationship that pushes Albus and his best friend Scorpius Malfoy to try to go back in time to save Cedric Diggory in the Triwizard Tournament.
I will be going into spoilers but before I do I want to give some general thoughts and feelings about this story. I do want to say that I knew going into it that the formatting of the book was going to annoy me as it is a play not a novel. I tried very hard to not let that sway my opinions but it did definitely make it more difficult to connect with the characters since you don't get much past the dialogue.
I found the first half of the book rather boring. Because this book has a time traveling plot, the story was rather repetitive in my opinion; even though each time the characters travel in time things do change, it still is a very cyclical plot. I also found the issues that create the drama of the story were too small to incite such large issues.
I did love how many cameos we get of so many characters, which I'll go into more detail in a bit once we head into spoilers. That being said, WHERE IS TEDDY LUPIN. I am upset. WHERE IS HAGRID. NEVILLE. I am upset that some of the supposedly most important people weren't involved in this story at all.
Okay lets get into some real straight up spoilers.
TIME TRAVEL. It's problematic. Let me first say that I tend not to be a huge fan of time travel plots because they can very easily be repetitive when you go back over and over again such as in this story.
But more importantly I'm confused why we got a time travel book. As many people have pointed out, JK Rowling has come out and said that she made a lot of mistakes when she wrote POA and that in order to attempt to fix those mistakes within her world, she destroyed all of the time turners in OOTP for that purpose. This makes me question how much say JK Rowling really had in the plot of this story, because if she truly hated the mistakes she made and did so much to fix them, why would she approve this reopening of the Pandora's Box of time travel.
I also have a huge issue with the fact that due to a humiliating loss in the Triwizard tournament, Cedric Diggory - the very kind Hufflepuff who asks everyone not to wear the Potter Stinks pins, who is mad that he won the game against Gryffindor in the 3rd year to the Dementors, etc - would become a Death Eater due to that. Not just a grouchy old wizard. A Dark Wizard so angry with the world because of one (huge but nonetheless ONE) loss that he singlehandedly turns the world over on its side. I just have a hard time believing that Cedric would have become THAT angry. I have no doubt he'd be bitter and sad and grouchy, and maybe lonely because he's so grouchy. But a murderous death eater? I'm not sure I buy it.
While I do love that Bellatrix got to be mentioned in this story because of her supposed "love" child with Voldemort, I'm still a little annoyed by the idea that they made a love child. Voldemort isn't capable of love or human emotions like that. Now I could maybe see Voldemort actively deciding to have an heir. But that's not how this part of the plot line was described, which it couldn't have. If it was a planned decision for him to make an heir, the Death Eaters would have known to keep that baby alive at all costs. Which means people would have had to know about it - like Draco. But this girl was kept secret. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Last thing before I stop complaining: Why would anybody be surprised that the 14 year old middle child was mad he got a baby blanket when his siblings got cool things that they actually wanted or could use. As an adult, I understand why Harry thought it was sentimental and that's cute. But put yourself in that 14 year old's shoes. I would not have been excited about that. Sorry, but I'm not sorry.
Okay I'm done complaining. Let's talk about the things I loved, because even though the time travel plot makes little sense, it was fun to see some alternate realities.
First and foremost I loved seeing the scariest version of the world, and getting so see that the fight was continuing even with little hope but much determination. Most importantly though, I loved reading that Snape was moved that Harry names his son after him. It was amazing and even though I'm one of those people that doesn't forgive Snape for being awful to Harry, Neville, and Gryffindors in general I did love to see him show some of that true emotion we know exists within him.
The alternate universe where Ron is married to Padma was freaking hilarious and weird and gave me the heebie jeebies. Why is Hermione such an asshole to her students in this version? Ron is still bumbling and I love it.
The ending. It was heart wrenching and palpable with emotion that I could not handle. I loved getting to see Harry watch his parents live through their last moments. It was something I didn't realize I wanted until I was reading it, and it was perfect.
So I had issues with this book. A lot of them. But I also laughed and cried reading this book because at the end of the day, I love Harry Potter and I got to live in a new spot of the story. So I'm glad I got to be a part of that.
Until next time,
MissSassyKassie
But more importantly I'm confused why we got a time travel book. As many people have pointed out, JK Rowling has come out and said that she made a lot of mistakes when she wrote POA and that in order to attempt to fix those mistakes within her world, she destroyed all of the time turners in OOTP for that purpose. This makes me question how much say JK Rowling really had in the plot of this story, because if she truly hated the mistakes she made and did so much to fix them, why would she approve this reopening of the Pandora's Box of time travel.
I also have a huge issue with the fact that due to a humiliating loss in the Triwizard tournament, Cedric Diggory - the very kind Hufflepuff who asks everyone not to wear the Potter Stinks pins, who is mad that he won the game against Gryffindor in the 3rd year to the Dementors, etc - would become a Death Eater due to that. Not just a grouchy old wizard. A Dark Wizard so angry with the world because of one (huge but nonetheless ONE) loss that he singlehandedly turns the world over on its side. I just have a hard time believing that Cedric would have become THAT angry. I have no doubt he'd be bitter and sad and grouchy, and maybe lonely because he's so grouchy. But a murderous death eater? I'm not sure I buy it.
While I do love that Bellatrix got to be mentioned in this story because of her supposed "love" child with Voldemort, I'm still a little annoyed by the idea that they made a love child. Voldemort isn't capable of love or human emotions like that. Now I could maybe see Voldemort actively deciding to have an heir. But that's not how this part of the plot line was described, which it couldn't have. If it was a planned decision for him to make an heir, the Death Eaters would have known to keep that baby alive at all costs. Which means people would have had to know about it - like Draco. But this girl was kept secret. It just doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Last thing before I stop complaining: Why would anybody be surprised that the 14 year old middle child was mad he got a baby blanket when his siblings got cool things that they actually wanted or could use. As an adult, I understand why Harry thought it was sentimental and that's cute. But put yourself in that 14 year old's shoes. I would not have been excited about that. Sorry, but I'm not sorry.
Okay I'm done complaining. Let's talk about the things I loved, because even though the time travel plot makes little sense, it was fun to see some alternate realities.
First and foremost I loved seeing the scariest version of the world, and getting so see that the fight was continuing even with little hope but much determination. Most importantly though, I loved reading that Snape was moved that Harry names his son after him. It was amazing and even though I'm one of those people that doesn't forgive Snape for being awful to Harry, Neville, and Gryffindors in general I did love to see him show some of that true emotion we know exists within him.
The alternate universe where Ron is married to Padma was freaking hilarious and weird and gave me the heebie jeebies. Why is Hermione such an asshole to her students in this version? Ron is still bumbling and I love it.
The ending. It was heart wrenching and palpable with emotion that I could not handle. I loved getting to see Harry watch his parents live through their last moments. It was something I didn't realize I wanted until I was reading it, and it was perfect.
So I had issues with this book. A lot of them. But I also laughed and cried reading this book because at the end of the day, I love Harry Potter and I got to live in a new spot of the story. So I'm glad I got to be a part of that.
Until next time,
MissSassyKassie
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