Set nineteen years after Deathly Hallows, young sons Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy form an unlikely friendship as they struggle to handle life at Hogwarts under their family's influence.

The duo goes to great lengths to step out of the shadow of their father's legacies. Potter, who is sorted into Slytherin instead of the favored Gryffindor house, contends with being overshadowed while Malfoy is bullied by swirling rumors as an illegitimate heir to Voldemort. By gaining access to one of the last Time Turners, they try to change the past by preventing Cedric Diggory's death. Their choices set off a domino effect, edging this adventure to enchant but also wonder if less is better than more.

J.K. Rowling with Jack Thorne and John Tiffany choosing Cedric's death as the moment the boys try to fix is both a great starting point but also completely random.

For many fans, Diggory's death was the pivotal moment in realizing nobody was safe. From then on, the books became a bloodbath. If we ever wondered what life would've been like, we get the lowdown in several different ways. It's fun to explore what mysteries lurked under the surface had events gone down differently - like Hermione and Ron not getting married, Voldemort rising to power after the Battle of Hogwarts, among others.

However, Lil Potter and Lil Malfoy using the Time Turners kinda comes out of nowhere. Potter seems to be angry at his dad for so long, and then overhearing one piece of information, takes matters into his own hands because he can. There isn't really an emphatic context on why the story has to fall down this rabbit hole, except that it just does.

Their adventures succeeds in subtly moving the differences between parents and teenagers along, and making us feel engaged with their detachment and misunderstandings. At first it feels wondrous and exciting, but the continuous returns jumps backwards also grows repetitive; like someone scratched a Prisoner of Azkaban dvd when Harry and Hermione try to save Buckbeak, and we continue to see that part of the story two more times with slight variations of how the characters make amends and reach understandings.

As the famous Dumbledore saying goes, “It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities", what the young boys decide to become is the heart of the eighth the story. As Harry and Draco echo the same dichotomy of bleeding Gryffindor versus Slytherin as always, Albus' bond with Scorpius is touching, funny, and endearing. Moving beyond the close-mindedness the 'elder' generation held onto throughout their teens, Cursed Child hones in on breaking the cycle of compartmentalizing ideas of evil and raising the next generation differently.

This is also reflected with another new character, Delphi, who is a fascinating addition but also the biggest and most frustrating issue. She is a raw and fierce element; an untamed force of nature without parental guidance as she strives to take her place as the rightful heiress next to the Dark Lord. She's a cool villain, however, the revelation of her being Bellatrix and Voldemort's child feels forced rather than adding something substantial to the long-term worldbuilding.

Similar to new info shared on Pottermore and by Rowling on twitter, a string of post-series' details has varied in its ability to please. Rowling's collaboration with Thorne and Tiffany isn't perfect, but is fun, weird, confusing, beautiful and adventurous. Like trying to separate a book from it's film adaptation, a new challenge emerges in accepting or denying how and if this eighth story fits into the wizarding world as we know it. Rather like the alternate universes explored here or even as some are saying with other pieces of fanfiction, Cursed Child works as a likable standalone but doesn't match its kin.


Things I Loved / Additional Thoughts:

"Hogwarts will be the making of you, Albus. I promise you, there is nothing to be frightened of there."
"...look you've got a nose."
Petunia kept Harry's baby blanket and Dudley sent it to him when she passed away.
Absolutely would love to see Platform 9 3/4, the wand fights, and the bookshelves/Ministry scene on stage
"I'm paint and memory, Harry, paint and memory."
Harry's vitriol attitude towards McGonagall = UNACCEPTABLE, DUDE.
Apparently, not getting the boy or girl you love turns you into a grumpypants no matter who you are. Hello, Snape-mione.
Draco's character development is the best.
Of course, it all goes back to Neville.
But where were other characters like Neville. Maybe not Arthur/Molly/George needed to be featured, but the play does take place at Hogwarts where Neville is a teacher....sooo....
Will Voldemort Day become a thing?
Snape grows a sense of humor.
[ALBUS] You just saw me two minutes, ago. [SCORPIUS] A lot has happened since then.
Only Hermione could cancel a meeting with the Goblins.
Act Four. Scene 15. Favorite scene of the whole play.

Simple and effective message that should be recommended or even required reading in education.

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
Genre: Science / Speculative Fiction
Rating: ★ ★ ★ / 4 Stars
Recommend: For young women and men for required feminist text of sexuality
Pros: Promotes vagina power
Cons: Quick-paced third act

Summary: After sterilization hits Republic of Gilead (former America), a group of religious men led by a military operation value women on their fertility. Offred is a Handmaid (sexual slave) forced to live with a couple and pray the Commander makes her pregnant. In this new disturbing life, she dreams of her past with her husband Luke and daughter.

Review:
Offred is a Handmaid; a fertile woman who lives with a socially and professionally successful couple - Wife and Commander - to have their children. In Atwood's world you are worth only what your vagina can do. Make babies? You're dwindled into a life of sexual slavery. Give one couple a baby, go onto the new pair and give them a baby - until your life and body is valued anymore.

Among this depraved ruling of womanhood lurks a sea of individuals cast aside. Unwoman who are brutal reminders of a time since passed; feminists, widows, nuns, lesbians, etc. who are exiled to the colonies. Econowives have married low-ranking men who take care of all household and child bearing duties. Marthas are older infertile woman who serve in a couple's households for responsibilities such as cooking and cleaning. Aunts trained and sentitized prospective Handmaid's about the older social laws of gender appropriateness. Wives, with their Commander husbands, are social and professionally successfully couples who take in Handmaids for childbearing.

You have no identity in Atwood's world, even if you are a Handmaid. You might be valuable to have a child, but the former world of leisure feels taken for granted. Lingerie, magazines, books, jobs, marriages and children are banned. Memories of wearing shorts, smoking cigarettes, falling in love are ghosts of your former life.

Through Offred's memories of the brutal brainwashing process in conception-like centers - where one girl was convinced into believing she earned being raped by the way she dressed and videos of women being torn open to are played daily - you feel the strangling of your own voice for not just your body, but dreams, goals, personality, brains.

While I thoroughly enjoyed the unique outlook Offred gives to us and the disturbing world she lives in, I felt Atwood's third act a bit disappointing. After the main character develops a courteous and odd relationship with the Commander, it feels like a lot of loopholes about other characters are loosely ended. Such as Janine who gradually loses her mind to her surroundings and Moira who is an outspoken warrior against the government. The conflict and the harsh reality of the world dissipates after a while. It's hard to grasp an understanding about the rest of the world when there seems to be resistance members all over the place. How do they work against the government? What makes the government as powerful as it is?

When gleaming at the current world as it is - right now - you can see the different voices emanate from the book. Magazines that tell you how to dress, use your body to get a man or keep a man, the worth of a relationship vs the suffering of being single, government exercising rights on how much you earn as a leader of a household, in the workplace, how your body should perform for reproduction. You almost don't wonder how much longer the world of Republic of Gilead is around the corner because some of its signs are out there in a way.

Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn is set around a missing woman's case in Missouri, voiced by the nearly-perfect wife Amy Elliot Dunne who goes missing on her fifth wedding anniversary, and the unhappy, number one suspect husband Nick Dunne.

Like life, the novel is split into perspectives and timelines, and easily, not knowing who to believe will hook you from the beginning.

The first part covers, Boy Loses Girl; a division of narratives every day Nick's wife goes missing and the investigative process, and old diary entries by Amy.

The second part covers Boy Meets Girl; the clues Nick uncovers over Amy's disappearance and loose ends of her past that seemed to be tied up in a nice pretty blue bow.

The third act, Boy Finds Girl (or Vice Versa) only leads to a stunning conclusion, if you are the type of person who predicts endings far advanced.

Unfortunately, I am one of those readers. Captivating, brilliant, and yet a bit entirely too cliche, the reading experience of Gone Girl was one of fascination and also frustration.

The conceptualization is easily addictive. For the first half of the novel, sympathy builds towards Amy as Nick seems to be living out just another day in Missouri, appearing unemotional and stoic. She is pictured, from old diary entries, as a unappreciated and abused housewife with a husband who only used her for her looks and wealth. As the the timeline rotates towards the second half of the novel, we begin to see the clearer picture of who Amy and Nick really are. Over the period a several weeks to years two lives come brutishly undone; one spouse is revealed to be a flaming psychopath, the other not-so-much, and they really fit perfectly together.

Both characters have a lot of baggage in terms of ghosts of their childhoods, broken relationships with parents, and failed dreams of becoming writers. Skeletons come out of the closet for both Amy and Nick, as it happens in every mystery/suspense novel, and there are a lot of interesting background characters and motives to play around with; Amy's obsessive ex-boyfriends and high school best friends, grudges that are held with an iron-grip, and little inner jokes between the couple that are the glue that holds them together. At most Gone Girl is more than a murder-mystery novel and uses typical devices like clues and suspects to build up a case around Nick, but then gradually builds a deeper psychological downfall of marriage and unrequited dreams.

As center performers in this novel, perhaps the most frustrating aspect was the narrative; both characters are entirely unreliable, which hooks you at first. But, then when the allure rubs off, the story grows repetitive and self-centeredness seems to be the root of the novel. Nick was the most frustrating was the male protagonist; there isn't a lot of sympathy to be had for him because he makes stupid decisions following his wife's disappearance, he shows more consideration over double-checking his every move so he is not made to be a main suspect, rather than being concern his wife is just gone. There is a technical draw to this, which comes full circle at the end of the novel, but it's not enough to really care what happens to him; eventually other supporting characters become more interesting, and inevitably aren't given their full purpose to the story.

And, perhaps the opposite of what the novelist intended to do, I began loving crazy Amy. Amy is definitely something else; wild, brilliant, smart, delusional, intuitive, unapologetic, down and dirty, and most of all, a female character who is the antithesis of normal female characters. In both books and entertainment, it's rare to come across a female character who feels wholly like an adult; she speaks her age, acts her age, even curses her age. She doesn't try to be a man in an man's world, she is an adult in the real world (however, off-kilter her perspective/reasoning/life experience may be). Her focus doesn't laser onto only fashion, only guy-centric, only wealth - like we often see in books and movies. Amy isn't purely a psychological vampire, nor a broken housewife, nor a tarnished daughter, nor someone who is merely missing, but so deeply layered and complex it will make your head spin. My thirst to know all about her is what drove me more to finish the book than I think actually finding out what happens to her.

Gone Girl is suspenseful and gripping, but I felt like I had seen the stage set before. In fact, I feel like I've seen it all before; the novel itself reminds me of a thriller I would watch at home like Prisoners on an empty Friday night where I was waiting for my mind to be turned into a pretzel only to be utterly disappointed by the ending that was not a surprise, gripping, or satisfactory. And perhaps for this novel's sake reality mixed with fiction a little too much for its own good because we have seen this scenario before. Television marathons of spouses snapping on each other committing murder and/or causing disappearances. The Nancy Graces of the world making nationwide cases out of personal family tragedies. A seemingly-perfect happy marriage systematically being dissolved by the those involved because of their own neuroses.

Psychologically, the novel is a page-turner. In the last 150 pages or so, the suspense loses its luster; the cat and mouse chase is gone, characters are running in circles, and the ending feels cheating. The fixation with Gone Girl, however, is that with the author's map at our fingertips, its easy to become the narrative's little pet to trail the investigation crumbs. But, even if the ending is unhappy, it should make sense, and not feel like a last-minute conclusion haphazardly thrown together. Even if the the characters aren't wholly likable, and they aren't supposed to be, "they should get what they deserve", but somehow they don't. The story, as a whole though, isn't entirely up shit creek, just doesn't live up to its hype.

I think the imagery of this book, for Nicholas Sparks, is by far perhaps the most 'mature' or adult-themed. Many of Nicholas' characters sometimes fall into the trap of speaking everything that is on their minds when one character falls in love at first sight by another character. Safe Haven is different in that the character's have a little mystery, and their voices come off more mature. With one character, Kevin, the alcoholic abusive husband, I was surprised and disturbed as a reader by the strong descriptive detail of his point of view. It almost felt like I was reading a story by a different author. The power and chaotic mind of Kevin in some ways overpowers the strength of the other characters, Katie and Alex, that we are supposed to be focusing on. There is no way that you really root for Kevin but towards the end of the story, the spotlight seems to be on him rather than the protagonists.

Like many Nicholas Spark's book, the story builds strongly 'til the halfway point, where you're anxious to know what happens and you can't possibly stop. I wish, however, that Nicholas Sparks had paused before writing the last two chapters. I felt that they were unfitting and also fitting compared to the rest of the story. Otherwise, the book is an interesting and fulfilling read for any Nicholas Sparks fan, or those who are interested in the drama/romance genre.

- couldn't finish this one but I tried -

Eggers is trying to make is an interesting point, but within the first 40 pages, I felt like his imagination was limited to Steve Jobs ruling the world into the utopia of all utopias. If you get as far as Mae getting a tour around the company's grounds, and don't feel like it's Apple on crack, then maybe it's not as obvious as I thought it was going to be. I pretty much knew where the story was going. I even flipped to the end, and I was like, "Oh, okay, saw that coming."

I gave up on reading The Circle. Only 40 pages in, and 420 pages to end up what where I know the story is going. People are a little bit better off looking into Big Brother type of movements, studies of people who are addicted to technology to know the author's intent, or just trying to get off of the internet for an hour, or a day, and see how far we get from understanding not only how much we personally rely on it, but the government and society does too.