Harry Potter and the Cursed Child or Harry Potter and the disappointing continuation

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

8th in the series Harry Potter

Publisher:Arthur A. Levine Books; Special Rehearsal ed. edition (July 31, 2016)

Genre: Plays & Drama, Children's Literature, Fantasy

Length: 320 pages

My rating:★★★☆☆

I wanted to wait a couple of days before I wrote this review because I needed to really mull over what I had read and my feelings about it.
In my mind I am a die hard Harry Potter fan. I have read the books so many times I have seriously lost count. They are my go-to comfort reads, my filler books when I don't know what to read next. I even love the movies. I know there are some fans that can't stand them but I think they catch the spirit of Harry Potter and Hogwarts.
Okay, there's no way to say this well: I did not like Harry Potter and the Cursed Child.

However, I still can't tell if it's because of the script format or if the story itself is flawed. Ultimately though, I think it failed to have that same spirit of the HP saga. There was such a sense of wonderment and exploration of the magical world that was so, so enjoyable and immersive, and getting to experience it along with a protagonist who is flawed but inherently likable and good made the emotional investment and pay-off at the end of the series incredibly fulling. Regardless of the story itself I do not think that can be accomplished in a script or stage production. (I've heard nothing but praise for the actual production and I'm sure it is top notch and maybe if I saw it first I would have been swept up in it and not minded that this story comparatively fell short.)

Okay this next part gets a little spoiler-y so proceed with caution.

The most disappointing part of the story to me had to be the fact that they revisited the same conflict of the series. Here was an opportunity to explore the characters of the original story and their children and their lives post the Battle of Hogwarts. Instead the plot attempts to do that while trying to have a finale that mirrors the finale that took seven books to build up to and an extremely complex plot to establish. Regardless of how good the writing, acting, scene design and characters are it's going to fall flat and it did. The fourth act was so frustrating because it was much faster paced than the rest of the play and it was trying to shove all of the elements in this one act to have this epic battle at the end and left so many plot holes. Convenient prophecy is convenient, convenient time-turner IS REALLY REALLY CONVENIENT AND TOTALLY UNEXPLAINED-

*Hem-hem* Anyway...the point being there were too many things trying to be shoved into this one story to make it clean. There were so many plot holes! One of the cool things about the original books is that there are very little as far as plot holes and certainly no major ones and then there's this story...

I will say Albus and Scorpius were cute and Ginny and Harry were still good together. Ron and Hermione were adorable, even though Ron was essentially a stripped down version of the movie characterization and just served as a way to highlight and balance Hermione's character.

I've chosen to treat this story the way we treat Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull. Yes it exist, it wasn't a bad movie, but it wasn't Indiana Jones.