I'll admit that I had a lot of mixed feelings when I heard that there was going to be an "eighth Harry Potter book." This so-called book, for those of you who are unaware, is in fact not even a book but a script from the play that just recently premiered in London. Another slight detail that a lot of people seem to forget to mention is that it was not actually written by J. K. Rowling. The script is based on her story, but the words are not exactly hers. They are Jack Thorne's. His name may start with the same letter as hers, but the difference is noticeable (at least for those who cherish the details of the other seven books).

For those of you who have never read a script for a play before, it contains few details more than the dialogue and some random stage directions. For me, while reading it, I could almost feel Rowling trying to burst through the script with more details. Some of the stage directions were talking more about feelings than actions. These observations have to make the readers wonder why Rowling went the way that she did. Why not just write the book? If she was going to continue, even if it was just one more, she might as well have just taken it all the way.

When I finally read the book myself, I wanted to have time to just get through it all in a single sitting so I didn't end up getting to it until two weeks after the release date. Another reason for my hesitation was all of the opinions I had heard on the book. There was an entire Buzzfeed article filled with hundreds of people's tweets about how Harry Potter and the Cursed Child simply read like a well-put-together fanfiction. My expectations after all of these encounters went way down, but I think those low expectations were what made me truly enjoy the script so much.

Though the timeline was crazy and some of it did feel a little forced, it was a beautiful feeling knowing that it was the real thing, that this was what J. K. Rowling said happened. After all the years between the release of the seventh book and now, we were finally given something more and I love Rowling for that. The best advice I can give to those of you who have yet to read the book: keep your expectations low. I got excited, disappointed, and scared all in the two weeks between when the book came out and when I finally read it all because I kept on reading what other people had to say. I had no idea how to feel, but I think that helped me enjoy the book more. Even if the words aren't truly J. K. Rowling's, I still couldn't imagine my bookshelf without all eight of the Harry Potter books side by side.