Review: Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling, John Tiffany, and Jack Thorne

I am overwhelmed.

I consider myself a big Harry Potter fan. I grew up with Harry, started reading these books when I was eleven, and it was the first series that started my love for reading. I can pinpoint it on The Prisoner of Azkaban. I had an assignment due, I needed to finish it, but I was so desperate to read this book that I couldn't stop. My mother eventually had to trade me chapters for pages. I wrote a page of my assignment, I got to read a chapter.

She found it funny that she had a child where the punishment involved not letting me read something.

My love for Harry grew and grew after that. I went to the midnight movie premieres, the midnight release parties, the Harry Potter set tour in England, and most recently the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. I own every pop, I wear Harry Potter t-shirts, and so forth. I love me some Harry Potter.

So when this was announced, I was excited. However, I didn't let myself get too excited. I learned early on it was a play - NOT A BOOK - and that was disheartening. I didn't want to a screenplay, I wanted pages of pages of magical imagery. So while I was hopeful, I wasn't as excited as I'd been in years past. Maybe that was to my benefit.

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child takes place about twenty-two years after the Battle of Hogwarts. Harry is a father to three children: James, Albus, and Lily. While James and Lily are relatively happy children, Harry's middle child struggles with his identity. Named after two famous wizards, he bears a weight on his shoulder, trying to live up to the standards of not only his namesakes, but his own father. Unable to emotionally connect with his dad, they fight often.

After being sorted in Slytherin House, a first for any Potter, Albus struggles to make friends and fit in. While he finds a best friend in Scorpius, Draco Malfoy's only child, this only makes life for Albus more difficult. Rumors have circulated for years that Voldemort had a child, a dark heir that will one day rise and Scorpius has always been the victim of that title. Bullied and outcast, the two of them rely on the other and want things to change.

Meanwhile, Harry is struggling himself. Outside of issues with his son, a string of dark wizards of continued to cause problems with the Ministry. When they uncover a time-turner, an item that should have been destroyed back when he was just a boy at Hogwarts himself, they're not quite sure what to do with it. Albus eventually learns about its existence and decides to change the past. Scorpius, though hesitant, joins him in this endeavor, and together they try to save Cedric Diggory, a boy who died on the night Voldemort came back to power.

However, by changing one thing, they change everything.

I didn't know the synopsis of this play before I read it. I just knew it was about Harry as an adult and his children. I found it more enjoyable that way, since I didn't expect half the things that happened. I didn't expect to see characters that died in previous books and to see timelines of what could have beens. By changing only five minutes of the past, we got see a world had He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named won the war and it's a world we wouldn't want to live in.

Warning: Spoilers ahead!

The scene that got me the most, though, involved Scorpius, Hermione, Ron, and Severus Snape. I always thought Snape died bravely (and full of guilt - I still think he was a bad guy, but was trying to make up for it), but we never got to hear his thoughts about how he felt dying for a cause. We only ever knew him as a professor, as a traitor, and as a hero. We didn't get the in-betweens. We heard stories from Dumbledore and others about how he felt, but never from himself. In Cursed Child we got to hear his thoughts:

Snape: One person. All it takes is one person. I couldn't save Harry for Lily. So now I give my allegiance to the cause she believed in. And it's possible - that along the way I started believing in it myself.

Yeah, I got all misty-eyed.

End of major spoilers!

Another thing I loved about this was we got to see Harry struggle with parenting. As an orphan, he lacked the fundamentals most of us are lucky to receive: a home, safety, comfort, parental love. He didn't have any of that. He was abused, neglected, and unwanted. So now he's trying to give that to his children when he doesn't necessarily know how. He isn't perfect - and his son is realizing that.

This play answers a lot of questions we had after the seventh book. I was happy to finally have that bit of closure. I think people just need to go into this knowing it's a PLAY, and NOT A BOOK. If you set yourself up for disappointment, you're bound to get what you want. I went in with low expectations and left happy.

Look at this is a little bit of extra magic!

Review: It Ends with Us by Colleen Hoover

Okay, let me tell you a little story.

So back in college I was dating this guy. He is, without a doubt, one of the nicest, most kind guys I've ever had in my life. My friends liked him, my parents loved him, and he was totally someone I could have married in the long run.

One night we were lying on his bed and watching TV. Both of us jokingly kept stealing the remote and changing the channel. It was a little game that still makes me laugh when I think about it. He leaned over the bed to grab something and I took my chance to steal the remote back. He saw my hand out of the corner of my eye reach for the remote and jerked back, intending to stop me. Unfortunately I was lying directly behind him and BAM! His head met my eye.

And holy hell did that hurt. I thought my eye was going to explode.

Immediately he freaked out: "I'm so sorry, baby! Oh my God, I didn't mean to - I didn't even know your head was right there! Jesus, you can have the remote! Put on whatever you want - I'm so fucking sorry!"

I ended up laughing because it was clearly an accident. He didn't lose his temper, didn't mean me harm, and certainly didn't do it on purpose. He looked ready to cry - something I had never seen and didn't want to - so I assured him it was totally okay. I'd live. Milked it a little bit and he totally ordered me a pizza. He felt guilty the rest of the night, but I was over it before he even said sorry.

The next morning, however, was not a good one. I woke up to a mighty fine shiner - one that was hard to even hide with make-up. I was still living at my parents' house so when I got up to explain what happened, my father saw my face before I had a chance to open my mouth. Now, my daddy is the best man I know and I've never seen him lay a hand on anyone. However, he jumped out of his favorite chair and stormed towards the door, saying he was going to kill my boyfriend. My mother stared at me with so much anger, I could hardly recognize her. She was so angry on my behalf that she wouldn't listen to me try to explain anything.

I calmed down them down, explained the truth of the situation, and eventually they believed me. They weren't happy, but they realized it was an accident. However, my father said something that stuck with me: "You don't have to protect him, you know?"

So why is this story relevant to this book?

It Ends with Us tackles a subject matter of domestic violence in a way I haven't seen it handled yet. It's felt like, to me, this type of thing has always been seen as either black or white. The abuse is so over the top that the character leaves immediately or they stay until the inevitable thing happens.

This book was a slow burn.

It Ends with Us follows Lily Bloom, a girl from a rough childhood. Growing up in a small town, she lived with her violent father and battered mother. She understood what her father was doing was wrong, wanted to help, but she couldn't help a woman that didn't want to help herself. Her mother never left. Meanwhile, she fell in love with the homeless boy in the area. He was kicked out of his home and living in an abandoned house and she wanted to help him as best as she could. Before she knew it, their bond was forged greater than steel and she loved Atlas with everything in her.

Now, years later, she's dealing with her father's death and trying to find her place in the world. How does she move on after living in an abusive household? In comes Ryle, a brilliant neurosurgeon that's hell bent on not having a relationship. He's too smart, too driven, to be distracted by lady business.

Too bad for him Lily is exactly what he ends up needing.

They fall in love - hard - and before long everything is perfect. Until it isn't.

The summary is very cursory and doesn't tell you much. I think that helped me experience this on a deep level. This book hurt to read it. It made me mad, sad, and everything in between.

I didn't know how to feel half the time.

"How could she love him after what he did to her? How could she contemplate taking him back?" 

It's sad that those are the first thoughts that run through our minds when someone is abused. Shouldn't there be more distaste in our mouths for the abusers than for those who continue to love the abusers?

And that right there is the crux of this book. This ran through my head throughout the book - the first part - because I feel confident that I would leave the second someone hit me. However, I never have been hit. The above instance with my boyfriend was just an accident, but my family immediately jumped to my defense ready to defend me. Ready to help me. Ready to protect me. I come from a family where hitting wasn't okay and was told that if I ever got in a fighting situation that I should run. Violence isn't the answer and pride isn't worth letting someone hurt me.

I think the reason we tend to focus more on the people that stay is because we feel closer to the victim than the abuser. We don't think of ourselves as villains, but we could see ourselves as the victim and we know we would walk away.

But would we?

I think this book brings up valid points that everyone - men and women - should consider and think about. I hope people read this with an open mind, and listen to Lily as she goes on this journey. It's messy and sad and messed up and not fun and happy and anger and everything in between.

That's not to say this book only touches on that subject matter because it goes even deeper.

Major spoilers! Proceed with caution!

Atlas, Atlas, Atlas.

Reading about him as a teenager HURT! He gets kicked out of his house, made to feel like he's nothing, and then he meets Lily who changes his life. She literally changes everything about it. She shows him kindness when there was none and friendship when he desperately needed someone. He was ashamed and embarrassed and it hurt me so much to read about him.

This moment: "Being so sick and not having a bathroom or a bed or a house or a mother."

When you're stripped bare of things that make us modern humans, what are you? Ugh, this made me cry.

And then this fucking happened: "He said the first night he went to that old house, he wasn't there because he needed a place to stay. He went there to kill himself."

"'You saved my life, Lily,' he said to me. 'And you weren't even trying.'"

How do you respond to that? That would be one of the scariest, most amazing, most heartbreaking compliments I think a person could ever receive. That you were so influential on a person that you kept them from taking their own life. That you gave them a reason to stay.

Then Atlas goes on to say: "'In the future...if by some miracle you ever find yourself in the position to fall in love again...fall in love with me.'"

Dammit, Atlas.

I fell in love with this character. And he's fucking good enough. He is. You are, Atlas!

End spoilers!

That right there is why I loved that book.

You'll fall in love, you'll hate, and you'll feel. Because that's what book will do to you. Colleen Hoover explains after the book ends how important and personal it is for her - and that's effing brave.

I think people should read this book.

Final rating: 5 stars