Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two (Special Rehearsal Edition)

by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

[Chelsea]

What I Loved

If you haven't guessed it by the rating already this isn't going to be a very happy review. The one thing I did like though was Draco and Scorpius. They easily stole show here. I found Scorpius to be a very lovable character and he just had such a great personality that I fell in love with him. Draco was himself more or less but you could tell he's changed and grown out of his horrible ways. I actually really loved Draco as a character in the series and was glad he got a chance to start to redeem himself.

What I Didn't Love

This is going to be a big list folks. The one thing I didn't love about this book was how ridiculous it sounded. There will be spoilers below but for those of you who haven't read it yet here's a spoiler free version. There were some events that were made to happen during the battle of Hogwarts that we didn't know about until now. These events led to consequences that Harry and the gang only saw 22 years later which makes sense. What doesn't make sense if how these events happened in the first place. It just completely blew my mind about how strange it was an easily brought my review down by 2 stars. It felt like a cop out almost, a made up plot point just to extend the story a little longer. Well it didn't fit and I didn't like it.

Another thing that let me down was the characters. While you could tell while reading this that the writing style was very different from Jo's, the characters should have stayed mostly the same. You should all know by now that this story is about Harry and his son Albus. Albus is a new character so we didn't have anything to base him on from before. I was trying so hard not to compare this to the original story but when the characters are this badly off then it's hard not to. Harry just didn't feel like himself. He acted childish and mean and it felt like he had no fight left in him at all. I was expecting to see a grown up Harry where some things had of course changed, but this felt like a while new character. Also Ron acted like a stupid idiot all the time and Ginny's character wasn't developed at all. (Kind of like in the movies to be honest.) They just could have done SO MUCH more with this play and it wasn't there.

I think one thing you should all know going into this book is that it isn't the 8th story. I know they marketed it that way but it just wasn't. The plot made no sense and the characters were different. There was a lot left out that could have at least been mentioned and some parts were super confusing (though they might have been less confusing acted out?). Don't go into this believing that it's a continuation of the story because it's not. The story ended at book 7 and this one probably shouldn't have even been released. It felt like a very poorly thought out fanfiction who didn't read the books and only watched the movies. There were details lacking that should have been put in and other parts that should have been taken out completely. Very disappointing in my opinion.


***SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT - SCROLL DOWN TO THE NEXT SECTION TO AVOID THEM***

First of all, Voldemorts baby?! I saw some spoilers mentioning that a month ago but I figured it could be true because it makes 0 sense. Bellatrix would have had to have that baby pretty quick in order to make it to the battle of Hogwarts. Plus how did NO ONE know she was pregnant?! Come on!! Really?! It was just too over the top and didn't fit with these characters at all.

Also can we talk about the trolley witch? What was that about?! Just one more thing that didn't make any sense!

I also found the whole time traveling thing to be really confusing. When they first came back and Harry forbid them from seeing either other I was like what? And then he was talking about how ridiculous it was that he was a Slytherin. I was SO CONFUSED at that point. It was like Harry turned into this meaner version of himself. Plus I had a hard time believing that him and Albus couldn't get along because Albus was outcasted at school when Harry was an outcast like his whole life. Just nothing about this plot fit together AT ALL.

***SPOILERS OVER***