SPOILER-FREE book review: harry potter and the cursed child!

Part of me kind of can't believe that I'm sitting here writing a book review on a new Harry Potter book. It's crazy. It's amazeballs. Dare I say it's...magical?

Ha. Sorry. I couldn't resist.

I have to say I wasn't totally bummed when I learned Harry Potter and the Cursed Child would be in play format, but not totally on board either. I was just a smidge hesitant, I guess. It turned out that that didn't have a huge impact on my enjoyment of the story. I was still able to digest it and sort of translate it pretty smoothly into non-play, regular story format in my head. That's how I chose to read it, anyway. I just sort of translated the stage directions into the sorts of visuals the more traditional narratives in the rest of the HP books would have evoked for me. My biggest complaint on the script topic is that I wish I could have read it without having seen the actors cast in the roles first--not because I have any problems whatsoever with the casting, because I don't, AT ALL. I'll be the first to defend the Hermione casting, for instance. But I would've just preferred to not have that confusion of two different versions of my favorite characters kind of competing with the flow of the story. I'd have been able to just skip the confusion of whom to picture in my mind for the characters.

Moving on...

I will keep this brief and spoiler-free. I just have to say that at first, I wasn't sold. It started out a bit slow and a bit depressing. Then it got even more depressing and darker. But then...it turned a corner and it all came together gloriously. And I loved it. I loved it and I am now once again depressed because Harry Potter came back for a minute just to end again! How cruel! 

Anyway. I have to say my favorite characters in this were good old Ron Weasley--I don't know what people are complaining about because to me, he was 100% Ron except BETTER--and Scorpius Malfoy. Scorpius was perhaps the most well-written new character, and his one liners and personality were so great. I want a new series of seven books that focus on Scorpius. To tell you more would just spoil it if you haven't read it. Just go read it and be prepared to love Scorpius.

A couple of criticisms: the story actually didn't 100% make sense to me. And Ron, Hermione, and Harry all felt a little out of character for themselves. Draco, too. Some of their lines just didn't sound like them. Those sound like big problems, really, but when I quickly read through this in the format it's in, they didn't really seem like problems that impacted my overall impression or enjoyment, I guess. I suppose that was all part of taking into account while I was reading that this was going to play out a little differently than a HP novel by JK. If that makes sense?

Okay, that's where I am going to end this, because if I don't shut up now, I will continue to blab on about this forever. Just go read it. It's amazing that it even exists and it's pretty great in and of itself. Yay!