Book Review: “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” 

By Ciara Anderson, ‘16

“Harry Potter” fans rejoiced this past summer as the eighth installment of the series was released. J.K. Rowling joined forces with Jack Thorne to create a play and a book to add to the Wizarding World. It was an exciting idea that answered many questions that were left unanswered from previous installments.

The book is simply a script from the play that has garnered much attention. The last we saw Harry was in “The Deathly Hallows.” This book introduced the characters Albus Severus, James Sirius, Lily Luna, and Rose and Hugo Granger-Weasley that are revisited in “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.” The basis of the story surrounds Albus Severus Potter (Harry and Ginny’s son) and Scorpius Malfoy‘s (Draco’s son) quest to save Cedric Diggory. Or rather, simultaneously fix everything they ruined in the process.

Cedric Diggory is a main character in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,” the fourth book in the series, who (spoiler alert) dies and leaves Harry feeling guilty for the rest of his life. Cedric is a loveable character, which is why his appearance in this new book was exciting. Book fans knew of Harry’s guilt throughout the rest of the series, but to base an entire script off of that—stroke of genius.

The unanswered questions: what’s going to happen to the children? Where is Harry and the gang now? Has the wizarding world stayed peaceful throughout this entire time?

This is 19 years’ worth of questions of course not in real time, though it feels like it. All of them were answered somewhat and the book was action packed, bringing old characters back to life and making us fall in love with the new ones!

Unfortunately, this book only reached my expectations, it did not exceed them. The other releases left me excited to read the next book, while this one only made me feel content that there was another Harry Potter continuation. I wish the father and son relationship between Harry and Albus was more concise. When we first met Albus it seemed like he and Harry were the closest out of all his children, then this relationship became hazy. They didn’t want to be related at one point, and then Albus suddenly wanted to save Harry’s reputation with Cedric Diggory’s death? Of course this makes for an amazing plot and shows that Harry’s stubbornness that fans have grown to love did not fall far from the tree, but a bit more clarity with their relationship would have made this book an A+.

I would recommend this book to everyone, the only requirement I have is to read the first seven books and fall in love with the greatest pieces of fiction of our time.