There's nothing left to be said about Harry Potter books. This was the first one that felt like Harry was changing, growing up, getting some agency. The whole book felt like autumn, with the smell of wet leaves clinging to everything. Naturally I liked the whole "finding a new home" arc. And, equally naturally, I felt very seen in the plot arc that introduces time travel for the primary purpose of reading more books and learning more things. This might be my favourite part of the series (either this one or the first).

Harry Potter – look, I can't be objective. I grew up on these books. My friends and I could act out entire scenes by heart. I went through the cycle a generation experienced: Love, obsession, disappointment, detachment (in many cases by growing up, in my case by discovering fanfics).

I cannot call this book enjoyable, because it was horribly depressing, but it was spot on writing that really drew me in. It felt like meeting real life people (and I had the same feeling in the Cormoran books), though that may only be in contrast to Harry Potter.

Here ends the story – and by the time the ending came, I wasn't all that invested in the world anymore. It was interesting, it was dramatic, but it was far from life-changing. Much of it seemed more of an intellectual exercise to me: How will she wrap things up, who is going to live? And after getting answers, I closed that chapter of my reading life. The excitement had been long gone.

Imagine being 14 when this book comes out, and being just not quite good enough to read it in English. So you have to wait for painful months while your mother (your own mother, the traitor) reads it in English and can then threaten you with spoilers.

Felt sense for books is a weird thing. The first book has a felt sense of warmth and wonder, while this one has a felt sense of damp and cold and wet and danger. I enjoyed it less than the first or the third one, but I still tore through it.

This was the first Harry Potter book that I read while it was still new. That was a novel experience for me: Most of my books up to that point had been old, or at least definitely not new. Reading an ongoing series was exciting. I don't remember much speculation about what would happen next, except for some recurring "Is Snape good or evil" debate.

Meh. I expected more (in volume, at least), and the Dumbledore parts reminded me awfully of Kästner in Pünktchen & Anton, where he felt the need to explain lots of stuff, especially the political implications. I think Rowling might have done better to trust her readers to think for themselves.

My low point of the series. I remember getting this book, at a midnight release party, and then reading it within the next day. I wasn't immediately disappointed, but I hated the whole "teenager yells at cloud" thing, and while Umbridge was delightfully evil, I just wasn't on board with the weird plot shape and the growing pains.