Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire - Review

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Harry Potter, # 4)

By: JK Rowling

Publication: July 8th 2000 by Arthur A. Levine Books / Scholastic Inc.

734 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Magic

Source: Personal Library

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Goodreads description--Harry Potter is midway through his training as a wizard and his coming of age. Harry wants to get away from the pernicious Dursleys and go to the International Quidditch Cup. He wants to find out about the mysterious event that's supposed to take place at Hogwarts this year, an event involving two other rival schools of magic, and a competition that hasn't happened for a hundred years. He wants to be a normal, fourteen-year-old wizard. But unfortunately for Harry Potter, he's not normal - even by wizarding standards. And in his case, different can be deadly.

Ok, so I think it is obvious at this point that I'll be "cheating" on all of the HP books. But I dont feel it is really worth mentioning anymore after this. Now to the review...

I have to say I liked this book much better than the others in the series thus far. And I feel that way because there's so much information given in this book in comparison to the previous books. Book 3 really started giving information but book 4 started pulling the pieces together and made the overall story begin to feel like a series.

Having only watched the movies before, I can't remember if I'm just missing pieces of the movies or what but this book really starts to tell you who's on which side and I feel like that was missing from the movies. I only remember speculating before without really knowing for sure one way or the other with the movies. But, I could be remembering incorrectly.

Also, because I love a love story, I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about the development of the character's attention toward members of the opposite sex. Yet because the characters are still so young, it seems very appropriate the way JK Rowling slowly develops their interests in this area. The behavior and feelings towards others of the opposite sex feels very real for the characters ages.

Another major thing for me was that this is the first book of the series that brought about that excited I'm-trying-to-figure-this-book-out-but-can't-tell-what's-going-to-happen feeling. That's key for me when reading a book. If I can figure out what's going to happen too easily in either events or character development, I really count that against the book/author. While trying to predict the unpredictable, I just can't figure out what's more predictable for a certain character. Once I enter this mode, the I-can't-wait-to-find-out-what's-going-to-happen mode, it completely changes the way I respond to the book, and I tend to pick up the pace and intensity trying to hurry up to find out what's going on. This is a good thing.

I'm looking forward to continuing the series and fishing out more secrets and piecing together more information. From what I'm told, JK Rowling really pulls everything together making everything make sense and no piece of information is useless. I just love when an author is capable of this type of plan for a series. I'll keep you posted as I continue through the remaining books.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire...4 stars.

Updated: July 7, 2018