Harry Potter and the Cursed Child

Several years ago we took Meg and Cam to the midnight release of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.  Although it wasn't a JK Rowling book, it was based on her famed series and left off where number seven ended.  Meg, Cam and Cal all read it immediately that summer, but I waited.  I wanted to reread the entire Harry Potter series before I tackled the new book.  It took me longer than I had anticipated, but the stay at home order gave me time to finally reach my goal.  Thus, I was able to start Harry Potter and the Cursed Child at the end of May.

I was excited when I first started reading the new story, but after the first forty pages I thought about putting it down for something else.  The son of Harry Potter spent the first few chapters feeling incredibly sorry for himself.  It wasn't much fun to read page after page of him whining.  Thankfully, the book got a lot better and soon I found myself unable to put it down, finishing the last 140 pages all in one night.  The story was an intriguing one with Harry and Draco's sons using an illegal time turner to go back to the TriWizard tournament to try and save Cedric Diggory who was killed in book 4, The Goblet of Fire.  Their actions never saved the intended, but it did alter the outcome of the Battle of Hogwarts therefore causing the death of Harry Potter and allowing Lord Voldemort to overtake the wizarding world.  All ends well, however, as the boys enlist the help of Harry, Ron, Ginny, Hermoine and Draco to travel back to the night Harry's parents died, Halloween 1981, to set events right and save the world.  In doing so, Albus and Scorpious learned not only that Cedric had to die for the Death Eaters to be defeated, but also that their fathers weren't quite the disappointing dads that they thought them to be.  I found it fascinating that the book revolved around the one part of the Harry Potter series that I had always struggled to deal with, Cedric's untimely death.  It was also interesting that they introduced a love child of Voldemort and Bellatrix LeStrange.  Overall, I was happy that I decided to finish the "newest" Harry Potter book.  It was a fun addition to a beloved series.