Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Release Party and Review

Happy Birthday to Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived and to the Queen herself, J.K. Rowling!

Today is a great day for Wizarding World fans. The newest installment in the franchise, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, came out for all to read TODAY!

What’s unique about this book though is that it’s actually the script for the 2 part play going on in London.

Of course, being the Potterhead that I am, I ended up going to a midnight release party last night at a local bookshop, Weller Book Works. They had an awesome party hosted by Salt Lake Comic Con and I do love supporting local small businesses when I get the chance! However, if you haven’t gotten your copy yet, head on over to Amazon to order yours now!

The party was fun with photo ops, food trucks, creature encounters (SO many snakes!), a costume contest, and sorting for the little kids. It was pretty great to hear everyone cheer when each kid was sorted! We didn’t dress up as our costumes are currently in storage (my bad when cleaning up the bedroom), but I changed into the Gryffindor themed shirt I got when checking in to get my badge (the ticket to getting my copy as the book store had SOLD OUT!)

It was a great night and thankfully it passed by quickly because I was spending time with my family, friends, and like minded people. Though at one point the fire alarm went off because of the DJ smoke and we all had to evacuate but thank goodness the books were safe!

Anyone who thinks that Harry Potter is irrelevant should have been there last night to see the long line of people waiting to get their copy of the book. Of course too those naysayers should probably visit the newly opened Wizarding World of Harry Potter in Universal Hollywood! I know I’m planning to go this fall or before the end of the year! If you go, make sure to book through Get Away Today and use my code to TwoGeeks to save a little bit of money on your Southern California Vacation Package.

We’d hopped in line early enough that we got in and out pretty quickly but the line was still super long when we left the mall that the bookstore is housed in.

I couldn’t stop grinning and neither could anyone else as soon as they had their copies in hand!

I knew that when I got home, I’d immediately start reading. And that’s exactly what I did. Until…about 5 AM when I finished the script and then tried to go to bed as my mind was racing with everything that I’d just read.

Now here’s where I do the obligatory SPOILER warning. So don’t proceed ahead if you don’t want to get spoiled. I’ll even put this as a “read more” so you don’t accidentally get spoiled. I have a lot of thoughts concerning this book and I know for some people, even reading just the tiniest bit of information seems spoilerific to them.

If you don’t want to read below, just know that it’s good, go read it!

But now:

SPOILERS AHEAD!

So the first thing to know about this is that J.K. Rowling didn’t actually write the script. The script is written by Jack Thorne based on an idea by J.K. Rowling. Jack Thorne and John Tiffany came to J.K. and said “Hey we want to do a play that’s after the epilogue” and J.K. was like “Okay here’s my idea!”

Okay I know it wasn’t exactly like that but you get the idea right?

Even though J.K. didn’t write the script, it’s still her idea and considered canon in the Wizarding World. I admit that there were times that it read like a Harry Potter Fan Fiction, but I think that was because the tone and voice was completely different than when J.K. Rowling write the characters. The biggest character difference to me was Ron Weasley who seemed like a mix between his brother George and his father. He was pretty cometic and I could tell that he was the comic relief of the play. He’s basically a full blown, real life #dadjokes! Since he now runs Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes, he’s always giving the kids practical jokes as gifts and pulling pranks.

One of my favorite scenes that literally made me LOL was when Albus, Harry’s son, used polyjuice potion to impersonate his Uncle Ron and ended up running into his Aunt Hermione. He proceeds to do everything he can to prevent her from going into her office including kissing her on the mouth and telling her he wanted to have another baby! (Or a vacation ha ha).

I found Albus to be kind of bratty. But then again he was very much a teenager. Albus was sorted into Slytherin and an outcast compared to his popular Father. He would focus too much on how different him and his dad were but really they were SO similar. It was a classic Harry move that his son pulled when Albus decided to go back in time to save Cedric Diggory’s life for Amos. In my head I kept yelling “Come on kid! You’re just like your dad, why can’t you see it!” But of course he’s a moody teenager so I wasn’t surprised!

My all time favorite character though in the whole play was Scorpius, Draco’s son. He was so freaking adorable that I just wanted to tuck him in my pocket and keep him forever! He was not like his dad in any way. It was obvious from the start that he had a crush on Rose Granger-Weasley and in the end he was totally planning his future with her after she turned him down for a date. He wasn’t arrogant and stuck up, but was super smart and loved to spout facts! A self proclaimed geek, I couldn’t help but love him of course. 🙂

The play itself was very Timey Wimey. With Albus and Scorpius going back in time a number of times, I felt like I was reading a Doctor Who episode! It was really neat to read scenes that were familiar to us from Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire from a different perspective. (And it was even better that on Freeform today they’ve been playing Harry Potter all day and that was the movie I got to watch!) I Albus had honorable intentions (see? Just like his dad!) but going back in time to save someone’s life was pretty careless and it was obvious that it would have negative connotations. Though I’m still trying to wrap my head around why going to save Buckbeak was okay…Like I said, Timey Wimey!

I totally freaked out (in a good way) about the blanket that Harry was wrapped in as a baby coming into play. You see, there’s this awesome babywearing wrap that was woven to look like the one from the movie. I was definitely thinking “Does J.K. Rowling know our obsession with that blanket?” I have a lap blanket of version coming to me here soon and I was lucky enough to host a traveling wrap for a week!

Another new character was introduced and I was suspicious about her from the start. She was an older woman who claimed to be the niece of Amos Diggory named Delphi. Her past was kind of vague and I could have sworn somewhere in the previous books they’d said Amos had no other family besides Cedric.

Well of course (and this is a HUGE spoiler!) Delphi is the daughter of Voldemort and Bellatrix Lestrange (seriously who would want to get intimate with Voldemort except for Bellatrix, whom by the way is MARRIED! Yuck!). She wanted to bring her father back so she could rule with him which I guess you could say is sort of sickly sweet but also I doubt Voldemort would have really been a great father anyways, even though I guess they did rule together in one of the alternate timelines that Scorpius ended up in (and thank goodness he hated it! Like I said, sweet little Scorpius!)

One of the things that I think people were complaining about with this book and why they weren’t excited to read it though was the fact that it’s a script which can be harder to read. I’ve read (and enjoyed) many scripts in my time as a former English Major so it was a quick read for me. But I definitely can understand how it’s difficult in reading the scene notes and n0t having a great description of the scenery and all that. However, J.K. Rowling gave us 7 books before (and yes there’s the movies that can help too) to imagine the world around us as we read this script. I was swept away in the world (as evidenced by me reading straight through to the end) and had no problems imagining what was going on.

Of course, this would be moot if I was seeing the play. Which I’m even more determined to see now. I’ve since looked up some more promo pics from the production and it looks fantastic! It will sadly probably be some years before I get to see it, but let us hope it doesn’t take me almost 10 years to see like it took me to see Wicked!

Lastly, I’m still not sure who the Cursed Child is…I don’t think it was Albus. He wasn’t really cursed, just acted super emo and bratty. I’m thinking it was probably Delphi, as any child of Voldemort would have to be cursed somehow!

If you stuck through my random thoughts, good on ya! I’d love to discuss with you the book in the comments. It’s so much easier to go back and forth talking about it instead of me just word vomiting everything that I have in my mind. I know I’ve missed a lot of what else I was thinking about but for now I’ll save it for the comments.