Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets- J.K. Rowling

Cover via Amazon

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is the second book in the Harry Potter series and was read as part of the Harry Potter read-a-long

Synopsis (from Amazon, adapted by me)

Harry Potter is a wizard. He is in his second year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Little does he know that this year will be just as eventful as the last …even getting there is an adventure in itself! The three firm friends, Harry, Ron and Hermione, are soon immersed in the daily round of Potions, Herbology, Charms, Defence Against the Dark Arts, and Quidditch. But then horrible and mysterious things begin to happen. Harry keeps hearing strange voices, and sinister and dark messages appear on the wall.

Review

How much I love his book, for the longest time it was my favourite Harry Potter book, and now it shares that position with Half-Blood Prince (if you have read both you can probably guess what I liked about these two). I must admit part of what I loved about this book is that I felt I was looking for it for forever after having loved Philosopher’s Stone- I must have missed it immediately though because I don’t have a first, or even second edition. My joy when I found it, finally, though was so strong.

I must admit this is the one book where I really like Ginny, and it’s a book where we first really see her (apart from a small couple of glimpses in Philosopher’s Stone) [highlight for spoiler]as well as a book where Ginny is a very important character. I guess I like the funny little moments when she is in front of Harry she seems so young and innocent [highlight for spoiler] and yes I think that picture of her is important, you would never in a million years suspect Ginny, or at least not until she was going to tell Harry and Ron.

Something I do find about the book though is that it really is very, very dark. I know they say that the books get darker, and maybe in ways they do, certainly there is more of a threat a little later on, but at least that threat is known. I mean nobody knows what is happening in the school, nobody knows who is controlling what is happening, and Harry is hearing voices in the wall. Sometimes an unknown horror is worse than one that you at least know something about, at least with the later books they knew the threat was Voldemort and they knew, at least up to a point what they would get from him. Even when you know what this horror is it still seems so unknown and impossible to control [highlight for spoiler]I mean even Voldemort can’t kill you by simply looking at you! (As they say in Potterwatch (Deathly Hallows:

“So, people, let’s try and calm down a bit. Things are bad enough without inventing stuff as well. For instance, this new idea that You-Know-Who can kill with a single glance from his eyes. That’s a basilisk, listeners. One simple test: Check whether the thing that’s glaring at you has got legs. If it has, it’s safe to look into its eyes, although if it really is You-Know-Who, that’s still likely to be the last thing you ever do.”

And that’s not even mentioning giant spiders, or an angry Snape!

What I really like about this book though is the information we get about Tom Riddle. It’s really interesting to see where he came from, and a bit of what he was like in school. I find it interesting that even early on I liked this aspect, even when I did not know how important it would turn out to be later on

5/5

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