God, no. This was horrible. If it wasn't tragically getting the last word in the Harry Potter-saga, I could perhaps laugh it off, or even accept it as a weird writing experiment. But as it is, people are referring to it as the 'eight Harry Potter book', and I will not, cannot accept it. 
 In all honesty, this was bad. And not even a charming, nostalgic, guilty pleasure kind of bad. It was all bad. Wrong. Horrid. And filled with plot holes. 
 It's not that it is written as a play, and the overall atmosphere has been changed. Of course a change of atmosphere is to be excepted, when long descriptions of school capes and spell lessons are switched for witty lines and a fast-moving plot in order to keep an audience engaged. Of course a change of atmosphere is unavoidable, when everything needs to be doable on a stage, while keeping a reasonable pace. 
 Rowling doesn't have time for descriptions of school capes or minor characters. She doesn't have time to invent new spells or even revisit old classes. A play is all about what you can see, and not as much about what you are told to see. I get it. And it doesn't necessarily make this a failure. 
 What does make this a failure is however all the plot holes. The reuse of dear and beloved characters who seemed to have completely lost their purpose and integrity in the years that has passed. A blabbering Ron who only mumbles jokes and looks confused - embarrassing teenagers with love potions, even though he was nearly killed by one himself. In this play, Ron is every bit as comical and inconsequential as he himself feared he would be. 
 Oh, and add to the mix a sobbing Dumbledore (view spoiler)[who of course is partly excused by being a portrait and thereby a shadow of himself ... but still. A sobbing Dumbledore? Even in a painting, I find it hard to believe. (hide spoiler)], an insecure Professor McGonagall, a completely insane trolley-witch (view spoiler)[(WHY was that stunt even necessary?!) (hide spoiler)], an evil Rose Granger-Weasley and a Harry Potter without any human understanding. 
 God, I really had hoped for better fates for my favorite characters. 
 And then, there's the plot. First of all, why timeturners and why now? It seems like such an obvious answer to Voldemort's earlier struggles, that I can hardly see why every death eater suddenly would remember them years after his downfall. It seems too convenient. Too unlikely. Why would Hermione have had the use of a time-turner in book four, if it was basically a weapon to resurrect Voldemort all this time? Why would a school-girl have been granted such a dangerous weapon, at her free disposal? No. Just no. 
 Secondly, and perhaps more gravely, time-travel is such a lazy plot device. It allows Rowling to play largely on nostalgia; to not invent any new scenes, places or even plot points. She takes the reader back into her beloved character's past, not bothering to introduce new places, but simply to revisit. This story adds nothing new to the world of Harry Potter. It doesn't explore or even elaborate how the wizarding world works after Voldemort, but only shows us what we already know. 
 Can you really call this a 'continuation', much less a 'contemporary Potter book', when it doesn't reveal anything about the wizarding world in 2016? 
 And while I promised myself, I wouldn't fault the book for its form, it still feels very abrupt. A play always comes in parts, and this play comes in two, but those two parts feel like two separate stories. (view spoiler)[The split between the first time-travel problem and the next is simply too wide. The story could have been finished by Scorpius' own problem solving, and yet it keeps going on. To prove what? To do what? To repeat itself once again?! (hide spoiler)] 
 There were times when this book felt like a joke. Almost as if Rowling was parodying herself. With concepts like Voldemort day (really? even the name sounds like child play), and even a key plot point (view spoiler)[like Bellatrix and Voldemort having a baby together - wasn't he supposed to be incapable of love? I'm having a hard time picturing him list sex as a priority - (hide spoiler)]seems unbelievable. 
 This book is horribly structured, its time-turner plot is completely weak and unoriginal, and the characters are flat ghosts of people I used to love. While it might work as a play on stage, it falls horribly flat on paper - and shouldn't have been published if it couldn't stand alone. I was even bored when I read this. I didn't care to find out, what happened next, because I couldn't recognize the world I'd stumbled into. The fast pacing is so ridiculous that it actually works against itself. 
 There were things I hated. Things I loathed. And even things I could have overlooked, if it wasn't for this: 
 I didn't care. I didn't care about my childhood friends who populates this book. The story didn't serve as a reunion, instead it served as a reminder. A reminder of places I used to go and characters I used to love. Rowling imitates herself, instead of creating something new. And that is the biggest failure of all. 
 (Oh, and then there's the fact that Rowling really didn't write this. But as the frontcover gives her almost all the credit, so do I.)