Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets is probably my least favourite of the Harry Potter series and is the one I was least looking forward to rereading on my quest to discover the magic of Harry Potter. It’s not overly the books fault that I don’t like it. The film version of this book is the only one of the Harry Potter movies that has actually frightened me. I remember being really freaked out after seeing it in the cinema and having nightmares about it. I’ve never actually watched that film again.
But I know better than to judge a book by its film adaptation. And I still don’t overly like this book. Having read the rest of the series (although not recently) I can see how this book sets up the future plots it just doesn’t work for me.
There were some moments that I found amusing – the degnoming, the idea of a flying car and I quite like Moaning Myrtle too – but for the most part these were few and far between and I found myself wondering just why I had actually decided to go back and read this series.
One of the reasons I think this book suffers is the fact that Hermione is absent for a lot of the final stages of the book. As with the first book Hermione is my favourite character in the series so not having her around was almost going to be a disappointment to me (but it’s also something I can live with). However, I don’t think the characters of Ron and Harry work half as well without Hermione to round them out. In fact the sections where it is Harry doing something without the other two are the parts that I find the weakest although that could partly be because I’m not overly fond of the Harry character.
I also still wish there was more from the teachers because I quite like them. If J. K. Rowling were ever to write some more books in the Harry Potter universe I would rather that it was set around the Hogwarts teachers rather than the ‘young’ cast of characters.
So I’m still searching for the magic of Harry Potter. I’m sure it’s there somewhere.
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