Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Review

This review contains fun and funky spoilers.

This book is fun. I gobbled it up in about 24 hours. But it was not JK Rowling’s idea. She did not write it. It’s a very good fanfiction, and that’s what it reads like. It’s rushed. This, of course, is in part the nature of the screenplay, but a LOT gets crammed in to 300 pages. The first half is kind of like Back to the Future in reverse, where everything gets screwed up by the changes in time. And I mean, EVERYTHING.

You don’t want to read it without having read the fourth book, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.

Another thing that makes it fanfiction-y is the homosexual undertones between Albus and Scorpius. They are “meant to be together” and they say things like, “As pleasurable as it will be to hide in a hole with you for the next forty years . . . .” Not “pleasant.” “Pleasurable.”

It’s punctuated like it was written by a drunk twelve-year-old who’s in love with the em dash and hates commas, except where there should be a period. You can chalk part of this up to special screenplay punctuation exceptions that notate inflection, but the description is just as bad as the dialogue. “James appears at the door, he has pink hair.”

The cover has nothing to do with the story. No bird’s nest comes into play.

The title is false. There is no cursed child. There’s a child who deals with bad rumors. There’s a child who’s a brat. There’s a child who there’s a prophecy about. There is no cursed child. 

Overall, four out of five stars for being a lot of fun but disappointing at the same time. 

At least her ghostwriters got credit.