From Goodreads: Harry Potter has never played a sport while flying on a broomstick. He’s never worn a Cloak of Invisibility, befriended a giant, or helped hatch a dragon. All Harry knows is a miserable life with the Dursleys, his horrible aunt and uncle, and their abominable son, Dudley. Harry’s room is a tiny cupboard under the stairs, and he hasn’t had a birthday party in ten years.

But all that is about to change when a mysterious letter arrives by owl messenger: a letter with an invitation to a wonderful place he never dreamed existed. There he finds not only friends, aerial sports, and magic around every corner, but a great destiny that’s been waiting for him… if Harry can survive the encounter.

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This is my second time reading this series, and I must say, it only gets better with age.  I initially waited until all the Harry Potter books were out before reading them the first time because I didn’t want to have to wait in between them all, so to tide myself over, I watched the movies many a time.  And you know, I’m glad I did it this way because I’m actually one of those people who doesn’t have an active imagination and I have no pictures of what characters look like in my brain as I read.  None.  An author can tell me exactly how they look and how they sound, but unless I stop reading and try to draw them (and I’m not artistic in the least), there really isn’t much there in terms of my imagination.  It’s like a blurry shell for me.  And that’s why I loved watching the movies first, because I now have an exact image of what each character looks like, and I can see them doing everything the text says, and it’s amazing.  It’s also amazing because these books are so wonderful—I was a teenager when they first came out, and so I’ve pretty much grown up with Harry Potter over the years, and to sit here and reread the entire series as an adult bring back much nostalgia.

The Dursley’s are awful, just awful, but I enjoyed reading about them in the beginning of this novel.  It took a great many more pages than I initially thought it would to get Harry from the Dursely’s to Hogwarts, but I loved it from the beginning.  But, even having read this once before, do you know what I didn’t ever realize?  Neville is actually in this book a whole lot more than the movie portrayed, and I never knew it!  I mean, I always knew he was an important character (and it’s been seven years since I last read these books, so don’t judge me), but I guess I either forgot or never really internalized how much he’s really in this novel.  It’s not just a group of three friends, but actually four, though Neville gets angry at some points and disappears from the text, only to reappear later.  This was eye opening to me, and now I wish there was more of him in the movies as well because he does actually play a huge part.  But, regardless, both the movie and the book did a phenomenal job creating a story that I just can’t get out of my head.  Which is better?  The movie or the book?  Well, that’s actually a hard one to answer.  I think the book wins because it’s got so much more information, but the movie is a close second.  Five stars.

I own this entire series and all the movies.