Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, Parts 1 & 2 by John Tiffany
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

I had high hopes when I first picked up the book and then realized it was simply a badly written fanfiction. This book is definitely not written by J. K. Rowling, and the storyline and characterization shows. I even got this book for my little brother when it first came out (as he is a huge Harry Potter fan), and he ended up disliking it too.

There were two major points that made me want to rip out my hair while I was reading:
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1. Characterization. This was SO BAD! I was actually baffled at how everyone was completely out-of-character.
--Let's start with Harry. This is the boy that grew up under the constant abuse of the Dursleys and he's telling his son that he wishes [the latter] wasn't his child? Really? I don't think so. Harry made plenty of mistakes throughout his life and he wouldn't project such terrible parenting to his son.
--Hermione. I was furious in one of the time-traveling subplots when she didn't end up marrying Ron and "settled" as a cold-hearted professor at Hogwarts. Haha...the death eaters might as well just take over before someone like Hermione doesn't reach her full potentials.
--Ron. Unless throughout the entire plot. Basically a lot of filler.
--Prof. McGonagall. The author made her like an old crippled lady. She is someone who has a very solid moral compass and wouldn't get let people walk over her.
2. Plot holes. It's unavoidable, but they were so obvious. When J. K. Rowling first introduced the idea of time traveling in the Prisoner of Azkaban, Hermione mentioned to Harry that they can't even be seen because it would alter the timeline too much. And this is just to travel a couple of hours back in time. When Albus and Scorpius travel OVER 20 YEARS BACK and create a very drastic change to the course of history, how is the future shifted so minutely? And they just kept going back and changing and changing the past. It was all pretty ridiculous, to be honest.
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Overall, I didn't like this book and I'm going to pretend like it was never published so I can preserve my memory of the original series. The only reason this book actually got 2 stars was because I liked Draco, Scorpius, and Albus. To anyone who is planning to read it: don't. You'll preserve your sanity.

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