Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone Book Review

Posted On December 19, 2021

“It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.”― J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Hi, I am the APC Enthusiast and today I will be reviewing Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s stone.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone – written by J.K. Rowling and published June 26, 1997 – is a story about an orphaned boy named Harry Potter and how he navigates through the tremendous change of living in the human world to living in a world full of magic and mythical creatures. Within the last couple years, this book has been recommended to me many times! Mostly from friends but it wasn’t until this past summer that I really felt the need to start reading the series due to listening to a podcast that broke down the entire series. 

Everything from world-building to the interaction between characters, to the magic itself, made it almost impossible to stop reading. Even though I couldn’t relate to any of the characters’ bizarre circumstances, I always found myself interested in the choices they might make next. For instance, when Harry received the invisible cloak during Christmas or what Harry and his friends would decide to do about their suspicion of Professor Snape. While reading I would always think about what I would do in each situation rather than the character and I think J.K. Rowling did a good job of reeling me back into the character’s mindset. Like Harry, my immediate thought was to try to find more information about Snape’s plans by using the cloak. It was interesting to see how a kid like him would abuse the power of the cloak by using it every chance he got, even if the situation wasn’t related to Snape. Or when they first became suspicious of Snape, my immediate thought was that they’d go tell Dumbledore, the Headmaster of Hogwarts. Instead, he and his friends, Ron and Hermione, try to take matters into their own hands.  

Lastly, I enjoyed reading how they set up Dumbledore and the main antagonist Voldermort. Even though they only made minor appearances within the story they both managed to have some sort of impact on all of the characters. Hearing the way people spoke of Dumbledore and the fear caused just by saying Voldermorts name made me excited to see their characters become more fleshed out later on in the series and even more excited to see the two of them confront each other. 

I didn’t have much of a problem with the book other than the conclusion of the story. Though I did enjoy the way the author developed Ron, Hermoine, and Harry’s personalities during the final chapters, I didn’t like the confrontation between Harry and Quirrell. The way Quirrell just confessed everything and the way Harry was able to hurt him with ease made everything seem too easy. Rather than giving a good reason as to why he decided to follow Voldermort, the book made it seem like he was forcefully made to betray Hogwarts. Also, the way Snape ended up not being the traitor left me with a lot of questions. Dumbledore revealed that Snape was close to Harry’s father but wouldn’t reveal what happened to Quirrell after Harry blacked out in the middle of the fight. He wouldn’t answer any of Harry’s other questions either which made reading their dialogue frustrating. 

Also, while reading this book I would always compare Harry Potter to Percy Jackson. I found a lot of similarities and differences between the two main characters(HP: Harry, Ron, and Hermoine/PJ: Percy, Grover, and Annabeth). Harry and Percy both grew up in poor circumstances and had some sort of abusive figure in their household. Both main characters are also descendants of someone who’s unlike anyone else in their universe. With Grover and Ron, they both seemed like total opposites. Even though Grover eventually grew out of his cowardly ways, Ron was never one to back down from a fight. Annabeth and Hermoine show a lot of similarities in terms of their intellect but the main difference comes from Annabeth being a lot more independent while Hermoine falls apart easily when faced with any kind of danger. 

Overall I really enjoyed the book and plan to finish the series by next summer. I would recommend this book to anyone who loves fantasy, fiction, or just a good story in general. If you decide to read this book, I hope you enjoy it as much as I did! That is all for this week, if you enjoyed this post please share it with your friends and family. I am the APC Enthusiast and see you next time! Bye!