Harry Potter and the Cursed Child – Parts One & Two (Special Rehearsal Edition): The Official Script Book of the Original West End Production is a script of a play in the Harry Potter universe that recently had a premiere in London. The story is written by Rowling and then edited to meet the needs of theatre and, boy, I couldn’t be more disappointed.

This book is considered to be the eight in the Harry Potter series, but I consider it more like a companion ‘novel’, just like Fantastic Beasts & Where to Find Them, The Tales of Beedle the Bard and Quidditch Through the Ages.

I said that I wouldn’t read this book, because I hoped to get to see the real thing, but after four or five days passing the store which was full of these books, Tom convinced me to buy it. I read it almost all in the same day and now Tom is struggling through it. I am not sure anymore, if we will try to get the tickets to the play. I think it will be a lot better  than the script alone…

Lets start to tackle the first thing that everyone seems to be angry about – the format. It is written like a script and well, what did you expect? It is in the title! Anyways, I didn’t have much problems with it. I have read scripts before, so I guess I was prepared. I actually enjoyed the format, I didn’t need the explanations or descriptions, because I have been so devoted to Harry Potter that I could simply imagine all the descriptions of places and events from the seven books and films, I guess we all have a little voice of J.K. in our heads, huh? So I had my own voices for the characters, I had their looks and wasn’t missing anything. I have to say that, if I just think about the form and not the content, it was quite good.

I am quite sure that it will translate better on stage, the actors will add the bits that were missing and I am sure there are enough special effects to make the change of the scenes fluid (the play has a lot of locations, so I think that is probably done very well).

I have been saying for years that Rowling should let go. Her little stories about Harry Potter or his friends are getting out of the hand, because she just creates more and more of them and this is another one. The problem is though that she can’t write anything new. Harry Potter was big enough to have an amazing amount of fan fiction and big part of that fan fiction is better than her own improvisations that have been published after the release of the seventh book. I don’t want to sound like scolding her, because I feel like she just can’t let it go, it is her baby, but the more she feeds her need to add something, the more painful it will be to stop, which will mean that the reader will never get a closure.

Let’s move on to the big disappointment of the day – the story. Did you see how many plot holes it had (or if you haven’t read it, how many do you predict)? I don’t know much about Rowling, but she strikes me as a bit of a perfectionist and it didn’t actually sound like she read this thing before approving that this is good enough and they can stamp her name all over it.

Alright, so obviously my biggest problem was with the plot holes. The world that was so carefully built (and I admit, did have mistakes) in the seven books, seemed to be destroyed in this one little installment. I believe that I don’t have to go any deeper into this, because everyone who has read it, will understand what I’m talking about and everyone who hasn’t, shouldn’t know.

It isn’t easy to put plot holes aside to look at the raw story, I tell you that.

The characters didn’t seem like themselves. I do see that of course the battle and everything that happened to the heroes might have changed them, but it didn’t seem like the changes were logical. I didn’t recognize characters I loved and even those that I hated. I know a lot of people loved Scorpius and I am not really on the same wave, because it seemed like he was made the way he was in order to be liked by readers and I had a huge prejudice because of that feeling.

There was something else to talk about, but I don’t remember. I didn’t actually wanted to write this, because well, everyone’s reviewing this book and I’m sure you are already tired of them, but here we are – I was too busy (or lazy) to read a different book to review. This book received two stars from me on my goodreads page and I don’t have to suggest it to anyone, because you are all going to read it.

Everything after this sentence will be full of spoilers.

I liked the time traveling idea (although it is a cliche) and I was pretty excited when I found out about it, you know, when they started to mention time turners, I imagined the perfect loops and how the children have always been in their parents past, but it went all bad and terrible, so many mistakes… And in the second round of time turning – the rebel Hermione round, I hated everything so much. And again, I was happy to see professor Snape and it had double meaning because the actor passed away very recently, but again it felt like he was there to create only emotions and play on reader’s heartstrings. He didn’t really change much in the story.

Some of the people  say that Rowling chickened out of a gay story line. I am not entirely sure what to think of that. First of all, I think that gay story would be wonderful, but might ruin the Harry Potter image in many countries in which it is not widely accepted, so plainly – bad for sales. I could also say that it wouldn’t really be that loved, prejudice is one strong thing, but also the inability to relate to characters etc. What more… I think that, if they would have been gay, it would be Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl all over again and that might seem like stealing ideas to some. Love is not in the centre of this story, so the gay relationship wouldn’t be either, but people would make it a big deal.

For me personally the gay plot would have been a brave step by the authors, it would have meant a lot to the gay community that is struggling for their rights, but it would have meant a drop of sales in conservative countries and countries that don’t support and approve gay relationship. And I think that my opinion about the book wouldn’t change much, except the appreciation for the step forward in equal rights for same sex couples.

I hated how everyone called Voldemort – Voldemort. I mean, when Harry was growing up, not much more time had passed, but everyone feared his name, now suddenly everyone’s fine with that? Really? And do you really think Voldy banged Bellatrix? He didn’t even have a nose, so what’s the situation below?! And how did no one ever notice her pregnant? Ok, I don’t want to go to this dark questioning place. Let me know your thoughts of this… thing below!