The Harry Potter Series

During my fifth grade year, I read the famous Harry Potter Series. And although I can understand why so many people like it, I can’t understand why they like it so much. The first few books are good but repetitive. And after I read the whole series, I realized the books blended together and I was having difficulty differentiating between the last few books due to their countless similarities. The only books whose plots I can say that I can confidently remember are the first three. But before I talk about the books and their ups and downs, I’d like to be clear that I don’t hate the series, I just think it is highly overrated.

Unlike most of the other books in the series, I enjoyed the first Harry Potter due to its interesting plot, characters, settings, simplicity, and originality. The book quickly introduces the reader to a large amount of its characters and plots but doesn’t overwhelm the reader, unlike some of its successors. The villain is well executed any fits the story very well with his deep backstory and connection to the main character. But despite the book having a great villain, plot, and characters, my favorite part about this book is how goofy the thing is. Harry is dork and when he is with Ron they are a world class comedic duo. Hermoine’s disapproval of everything they do is hilarious, and the scenarios they are put in are so unusual they make the reader chuckle. Overall, I’d give the first book a 8/10. Not the best book, but it is an enjoyable read.

While reading the second book, the reader quickly realizes that it is very similar to its predecessor. And although the second book introduces some new concepts and ideas to the series, it isn’t distinct enough for my liking. I think this is true for every book in the series besides the first. However, it came to me as a surprise that this wasn’t a big enough deal to make the second and third books bad. They were still decent books and the story was still clever enough so that they were still somewhat interesting. I’d give both the second and the third book a 7/10. However, any entertainment the series once had is completely gone after the first three books.

In my opinion, any of the books past the first three aren’t interesting because they are the opposite of the original. They are so repetitive that I have trouble differentiating between any of their plots and the author tries to stuff them with too many ideas and concepts and none of those concepts are fun or interesting. I wouldn’t even say these books are dumb fun, they are just dumb and I wish the author had taken the few good ideas from each of the bad books and compiled them all into a fourth and final book. So I give every book past the third a 4/10.