From Goodreads: The summer holidays are dragging on and Harry Potter can’t wait for the start of the school year. It is his fourth year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and there are spells to be learnt, potions to be brewed and Divination lessons (sigh) to be attended. Harry is expecting these: however, other quite unexpected events are already on the march…

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This fourth installment in the awesome Harry Potter Series marks the start of a much darker tone, yet it is perhaps my favorite of the series to day.  It also is the last of the series that I am quite familiar with in movie form–so I am quite looking forward to reading books five, six, and seven since I am less familiar with all that happens in them.

This novel is so well written—the entire world created by Rowling is by far one of the best I’ve ever immersed myself in, and this is the first novel in the series to actually make me cry. While the others are extremely well written, I feel as if the first two novels are much lighter a fluffy, though they hold their own evils; they are in no way like this fourth novel, following the deaths of many, one of which is a very awesome character we’ve learned to love. Even the third novel, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, with it’s escaped prisoner on the prowl and dementors attempting to suck the life out of wizards and witches alike, didn’t feel nearly as dark or foreboding as this.

Opening with a murder, death eaters terrorizing muggles, and then the advent of deadly games, this novel is the first to put a darker spin on these lovable MG/YA novels. And I love it. While I do love the first three novels, this one takes a fun world and makes it darker, adding real threats and testing the reader’s emotions on a whole new level. It’s superb. Five stars.

I own all these novels and movies.