Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

The penultimate installment in the HP series, and the first of JK “I didn't read The Lord of the Rings until after I'd finished writing these books, honest” Rowling's books that I can genuinely say I enjoyed from start to finish. It made me laugh out loud (Roonil Wazlib cracked me up) and shed a tear (Hagrid carrying Dumbledore's body at the funeral was heartbreaking), and for the first time since starting this series I felt truly invested in the characters.

I particularly enjoyed the return to the focus on school work in this book, and found myself sharing Harry, Ron, and Hermione's nerves when the owls bearing their exam results turned up. I don't think I'll ever tire of reading about the various concoctions muddled together in potions class - if I was a Hogwarts pupil it would definitely be my favourite subject, and I'd love to get my hands on a copy of that annotated textbook! Despite Draco playing a bigger part in this book, he remains quite a flimsy character and it would be good to see him fully rounded out before the end of the series. I appreciated JKR's clever use of the pensieve as a vehicle to give us access to Voldemort's history while allowing us to spend a little more time with Dumbledore before his unfortunate demise, though I wouldn't be surprised to find that we haven't seen the last of the old man.

Hopefully, what with ridding the wizarding world of the greatest evil ever to threaten it, there won't be much time left for teenage romance in the final book. I suspect I would have enjoyed those bits a lot more if I'd first read the books as a teenager, but reading them for the first time as an adult makes it all a bit voyeuristic. Despite that, I did think JKR handled them very tactfully, and I thought this, from when Harry and Ginny first kiss, was lovely:

After several long moments — or it might have been half an hour — or possibly several sunlit days — they broke apart.