Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (2)

Following on from Philosopher's Stone, this takes us through Harry Potter's second year at Hogwarts. It opens with Harry spending "the worst birthday" at No 4 Privet Drive and his aunt, uncle and cousin are just as mean as ever. With two people coming to have dinner and the husband to have a discussion with his uncle which his uncle hopes will sign a deal at his firm, everything's looking rosy in the garden for them so long as Harry "stays in his room, makes no noise and pretends he's not there", but unfortunately this is Harry Potter we're talking about. A visit from a house elf, warning Harry not to return to school, then causing havoc in the kitchen because Harry refuses to co-operate, ends in Harry being imprisoned in his room behind bars, but thankfully help is on the way and after the rest of his summer holiday spent at Ron Weasley's home, Harry is in hopes of a smooth journey back to school. But unable to get through the barrier at King's Cross he and Ron have one way only of getting back to school and that's by means of a flying car Ron's dad has enchanted. After a far from smooth landing at the school and fear of expulsion the year begins, this time with an inept teacher who has no idea how to treat injuries and turns Valentine's day into absolute mayhem. But when Harry begins to hear voices which nobody else can hear and an attack is made on Halloween night, followed by a strange message on the wall, it's the precursor of more attacks, ending in the school having to be closed unless it can be stopped. This is one book which is a page turner and you will not be able to put down.

The book is definitely good but I am disappointed in the seller and marketing strategy. Price printed on book is 399 while seller has put a sticker of 499 and then selling at a discount.

You don't need me to review the book as written. This is to note that the paperback version from Scholastic is well made and reasonably durable. We needed to hand out a bunch of copies and these were kid valued, kid friendly physical copies.

great book. i grew up during the time the books were being released but for some reason never read them at the time. i saw every movie and i loved them all. just recently i decided to start reading, the first one was free as a prime member so i thought 'why not?'. i asked my friends if i should read them even though i essentially knew what happened because i had seen the movies, they all said yes and they were right. the details are great, it makes you wish certain things from the book made it into the movies. my goal is to at least read a couple more books (it took a month each to finish the first two, just reading when i had some time) this year. it would be even better to finish the complete series but i know the books get longer so we'll see about that.

The book itself is Harry Potter if you are looking at book two you know this already - the three stars is not for the book, but for the kindle edition. This is because - even now in 2019 - these books still do not have whispersync between the audible and the kindle editions. I bought the second book's kindle edition after reading the first through kindle unlimited as a test to see if it was because of the unlimited book's free status. That was not the case. I attempted to do some research, articles about the series, its popularity as an audio book, and the whispersync availability of other books was misleading. - and yes I know it doesn't say whispersync on the Amazon page for the Potter books. But honestly, there is no good technical reason for it not to be available, and until a time as they enable it on this series my rating will remain the same.