Reviews - Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two

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18.8k reviews for:

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Parts One and Two

Jack Thorne

3.15 AVERAGE

apandabearcub's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous funny informative reflective sad fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

mechiiu's review against another edition

2.0

nose q decir, pendejos insoportables, harry toxico, todo muy meh

veronicakoch's review against another edition

3.0

This has got to be the weirdest fanfiction ever. And then you realize it was written by JKR herself, and it’s that much worse. I read it when it was first released, gave the book to a friend, and never asked for it back. Save your brain, go read something on AO3 instead.

akarr's review against another edition

2.0

TBH this is not very good and it kind of reads like mediocre Harry Potter fan fiction-- the plot is silly (so silly), and it's very out of character for all the original characters, and the writing is kind of bland-- plus the subtext between Albus and Scorpius is laid on so thick it's ridiculous. All that being said however, I did still read it, and I did still cry at the end because I love HP. (And I'll admit Act 4 was... alright)

gaelencms's review against another edition

4.0

Pretty alright. The story was solid, but the play as a whole felt like it was restricted by the fact that it was a play in that it tried to cram a full novel's worth of plot and characters into a relatively short period in a form that doesn't have that much space to work with. As a result, some of the character interactions that might work given more time/space to develop don't quite land (for example, the emotional conversation between Harry and Dumbledore's portrait felt like it came out of nowhere even if the actual content of the conversation fits the characters). The new characters are also mostly sketches for the first half or so of the play and only come into their own towards the end, but even the characters from the original books are different, which is fine except no context is provided to support the development in that direction. Harry is awkward with his kid after supporting him well at the beginning; Ron is suddenly the jokester when that used to be the twins' role; Ginny... is still not much of a character - in fact, she's even flatter than she was in the books, where she was at least somewhat lively. I enjoyed reading the play, and maybe it works better on stage, but there are some glaring flaws.
In the same format, a similar story with a narrower scope could've worked, and the same story with the same number of characters could've been great in novel form, but as it is it's compromised by the format to some degree.