Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

I believe this is the book so many have waited for, but it is something different. I have read the reviews on this book and it is hard to understand why so many wanted this to be just like J.K. Rowling's other novels but it is clearly not meant to be that way. It is a theatrical play and this is that script, so story lines won't be as developed as readers might want. As a play, the scenes would move forward rather quickly in order to garner the entire premise behind this book. Unlike the previous Harry Potter novels, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is a screen play that is based on a theatrical production that began on June 30, 2016. Now readers who don't have the opportunity to view the play can at least read the script and gain a sense of what this latest book in the Harry Potter series entails. For me, it was well worth the wait, and one that I can't wait to add to my Potter Collection.

It took me a few pages to get past the idea that I was reading a script and soon it flowed so well, once again I was back into J.K. Rowling's mystical world of witches and wizards. Harry Potter and the Cursed Child picks up exactly where the Deathly Hallows ends, 19 years later we see our familiar characters Harry, Ron and Hermoine who have started their own families. Now they next generations is being sent off for their first year at Hogwarts. For Albus Severus Potter, it must be hard to be the son of Harry Potter and have such expectations placed on your shoulders for all the others who will be at Hogwarts. He struggles to come to terms with this and finds a true friend among Scorpius, Draco Malfoy's son. His first shock comes when the sorting hat does not place him among the Gryffindors and instead is in Slytherin.

Yet despite the best intentions of Scorpius, who is desperate for a friend in Hogwarts based on a rumor that he is the child of Voldermort since Draco and Astoria couldn't have a child of their own and thus Scorpius is struggling to find a way to fit in. Albus finds his own struggle with trying to be his own person without the label of being Harry Potter's son. He begins to rebel and isolate himself from his other friends like Rose Granger-Weasley and his own brother James. It eventually affects his relationship with his own father, who fails to grasp how difficult it must be for Albus. Harry meanwhile is dealing the the rumors of Voldemort having a child when nightmares begin to haunt him and that infamous scar begins to burn again. When he is confronted by Amos Diggory who believes Potter holds the key to restoring the life of Cedric who should have never died, now having a time turner in his possession, begs Harry to use it to change the events from the Tri-Wizard Tournament and give him back his son. Harry refuses and argues that he doesn't even possess such an object.

But Albus overhears the conversation and vows to make good on something his father flat out refuses to do. He convinces Scorpius to join him when they leave on the train to Hogwarts but never make it there. Now the search is on for the families to figure out just where in time the boys are before they make an adjustment in the time continuum that will adversely affect the events surrounding Voldemort and forever alter their own lives.

I purchased my own copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, Jack Thorne and John Tiffany and received no monetary compensation for a favorable review. This is my own unbiased and personal review of the book. If you are expecting this to be like the other seven novels, then you might be disappointed. This is a theatrical script of 320 pages that gives readers what happened when we were left on Platform 9 3/4 at the end of the Deathly Hallows. How the life of Albus is forever changed as he ventures off to Hogwarts with the expectations of being the son of the Boy Who Lived. I especially loved the twists in time and how things we know were changed and the outcomes would have been different versions of the novels in the Harry Potter series. For me, this is easily a 5 out of 5 stars. It definitely gives J.K. Rowling another place to begin to elaborate on this story if she decides to pick it up again, and one can only hope, this will be the case.

For more information about Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, J. K. Rowling or where you can pick up a copy of this book, please click on the links below:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J. K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

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