Harry Potter and the Mostly Good Story About His Kid

Confession: I have owned my very own copy of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child for about 2 years, ever since I bought it at the super cool Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris (if you EVER have the chance to go to Paris, it’s a must visit. Try not to live there. Though, they don’t really frown upon people living there. But I digress). It has set, unread, in that time. I’m a pretty significant Potter fan, but I had heard of it being divisive, and some of my friends straight up did not like it so it sat, idle. It was only when my stepson who is a HUGE Harry Potter fan brought a copy home from the local library that I decided to pick it up. But first, I had to actually go to the local library because my copy, all Parisian and whatnot, though definitely in English, was ever so slightly different making a tandem read a chore. So, to this day, I still haven’t read MY copy of this book (I digress again). But it was well worth it to share such a fun experience with a (hopefully) budding reader.

This is a book (play really) that I could have read in one afternoon, but, the tandem read meant that it took weeks. That was a bit painful, but also interesting as we pondered what would happen next. In fact, I found that in verbally telling my fiance about it I actually was able to predict most of the story. I typically fall into a book, letting the story guide me, so it was an interesting exercise to talk to someone else about it as I went.

This is a darker Potter, though really I think that just means it continues where it left off.  The early Potter books were fun coming of age stories, with darkness on the fringe, but of course the later ones were starkly different, real consequences and sadness abound. So, in that sense, this is faithful to the original. I found the characters to be true to themselves as well.

My only complaint was that I felt the plot was a little thin and predictable, but overall I enjoyed it and thought it was a nice continuation of the series. But, I won’t consider it really part of the original Potter universe, and I hope J.K. now decides to let sleeping Potters lie.