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

A patch of scarlet swam past, and Harry heard a soft clatter of claws beside him.
"Fawkes," said Harry thickly, "You were brilliant, Fawkes."

This was always my favourite of the movies. I love the Chamber of Secrets and I love the monster dwelling there and I love Fawkes (I was quite when I got to the part of the quote), and yet this one also has all the things I hate the most. I was always uncomfortable with Harry's broken arm and the Polyjuice potion and tried to busy myself with other things while these things were happening. Urgh.

I don't know anyone who doesn't have a general idea about these books but you're so fortunate if it's all ahead of you still! So, this one has Harry trying to get back to Hogwarts, only to be stopped by elf Dobby, who's worried about terrible things happening to Harry in Hogwarts if he goes back. In Hogwarts, someone's opened the Chamber of Secrets, and no one even knows what that means, except that it's sure to be trouble.

I do like this book, really. I just wish it had more of the things I liked and less of the things I didn't like. I enjoyed Tom Riddle (fun fact: in the Finnish edition his name is Tom Lomen Valedro for, well, you can imagine why if you've read the book) so much and I loved being in the Chamber of Secrets and I wanted more time for these things. I suppose it's not as pronounced in the movie since it had to cut a lot of stuff out, but darn I felt like the daily life took a bit too much emphasis here. It's not a bad thing in general - it's actually what really sets the books apart from the movies - but... Chamber of Secrets... the heir of Slytherin, give me more... There's some nice things about the daily life, too, of course. Whenever we go into more detail about the more minor characters, it feels like a new kind of candy I didn't know existed but now want more of. It's great.

We were in Slytherin at the Sittning, if you were interested! It was a lot of fun!

I still don't feel like this was an amazing read, though. Maybe I've seen the movie too many times and grown disenchanted, but I'm still waiting for a Harry Potter book to blow me away. I thought I'd get more of my favourite things when I read this book but that didn't happen and I'm pretty salty about that. I guess you can't have everything. I'm really glad to be finally reading these books though - I feel a little less uncultured and they keep me company while walking around sometimes.

I already started Prisoner of Azkaban yesterday, right after finishing this one. I'm pretty excited since it's always been my least favourite of the movies and thus I've not watched it until boredom, haha. Besides, the first part with the Dursleys has been interesting so far.