Review - Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince by J. K. Rowling

Title: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince

Author: J. K. Rowling

Series: Harry Potter #6

Pages: 652

Release Date: September 16th 2006

Format: Paperback

Buy it: Amazon

Add it: Goodreads

Synopsis: When Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens, the war against Voldemort has begun. The Wizarding world has split down the middle, and as the casualties mount, the effects even spill over onto the Muggles. Dumbledore is away from Hogwarts for long periods, and the Order of the Phoenix has suffered grievous losses. And yet, as in all wars, life goes on.

Harry, Ron, and Hermione, having passed their O.W.L. level exams, start on their specialist N.E.W.T. courses. Sixth-year students learn to Apparate, losing a few eyebrows in the process. Teenagers flirt and fight and fall in love. Harry becomes captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, while Draco Malfoy pursues his own dark ends. And classes are as fascinating and confounding as ever, as Harry receives some extraordinary help in Potions from the mysterious Half-Blood Prince.

Most importantly, Dumbledore and Harry work together to uncover the full and complex story of a boy once named Tom Riddle—the boy who became Lord Voldemort. Like Harry, he was the son of one Muggle-born and one Wizarding parent, raised unloved, and a speaker of Parseltongue. But the similarities end there, as the teenaged Riddle became deeply interested in the Dark objects known as Horcruxes: objects in which a wizard can hide part of his soul, if he dares splinter that soul through murder.

Harry must use all the tools at his disposal to draw a final secret out of one of Riddle’s teachers, the sly Potions professor Horace Slughorn. Finally Harry and Dumbledore hold the key to the Dark Lord’s weaknesses... until a shocking reversal exposes Dumbledore’s own vulnerabilities, and casts Harry’s—and Hogwarts’s—future in shadow.

My Review: This book was my second favourite of the series. I read this one not thinking about the films like I did with the others and time just flew by while I was reading it.

Harry spends this book looking at flashbacks of Voldemort’s life with Dumbledore, here he sees some similarities between himself and Voldemort. They both grew up without their parents one with their aunt and uncle the other in a orphanage. They both attended Hogwarts but from there their lives changed, Voldemort was put in Slytherin and Harry in Griffindor. Voldemort likes to torture the children around him and Harry makes many friends.

While looking into Voldemort’s past Harry realises that he has the one think that can help him bet Voldemort, friendship.

Voldemort’s Death Eater’s manage to infiltrate Hogwarts and Dumbledore is killed making thinks very dark in the ‘Muggle’ and ‘Magical’ world

I really liked the scenes between Mrs Weasley and Fleur, the two fighting all the time and the snide digs had me laughing as no matter what Mrs Weasley say’s and does Fleur doesn’t back down.

I was glad to see that Ginny’s story evolved during this story and we get to see how talented she really is and I’m glad that she got with Harry.

The one thing that bugs me is that no one, not even Dumbledore believed Harry when he said that Malfoy was a Death Eater no matter how many times he says it they all ignore him.

Currently Reading: New Moon by Stephenie Meyer

Read in 2019: 26/30