Harry Potter and the Cursed Child: Parts One and Two
John Tiffany
Read out loud with Elise. A fun story and definitely a worthy successor to the original books. Scorpius Malfoy is an interesting new character (and, after Professor McGonnagal, my favorite to voice). Time-travel plots are not my favorite, but I can see how it was in some sense the path of least resistance. Plus, getting some Snape scenes in the alternate timeline was great! (Also fun to voice, thanks Alan Rickman.)
My main complaint was that a couple of the heart-to-heart scenes near the end (particularly Harry and Dumbledore) read really awkwardly and kind of felt like they were dropped in from nowhere. Perhaps I didn’t have a good feel for the scenes, and would have reacted differently if I had seen it on stage. Also, I guess this was kind of unavoidable, but it was pretty odd how Lily and James (Harry’s other children, not his parents) were introduced in the opening scene and basically never seen again, with the story focusing entirely on Albus. I guess JKR kind of set herself up to have to deal with that with the end of the 7th book, but I kind of thought it would have been better never to introduce them at all.