Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Harry Potter, #2) in CoS Forums

May 08, 2011 Jennifer rated it it was amazing

Originally read in 1999.

I must admitt that I never really list Chamber of Secrets as my favorite book, but I simply love all the suspense surrounding the Chamber itself. What makes it even more intriguing is the fact that only Harry can hear the bodiless voice and then all these attacks start to occur. Of course it's Hermione who figures out what monster is held within the Chamber itself. There is also the fact about who was the cause of the Chamber being opened and who it was fifty years ago as ...more

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Jan 07, 2022 Jennifer rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This illustrated edition is gorgeous!

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Oct 02, 2010 Lucy rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here. How much I love his book, for the longest time it was my favourite Harry Potter book, and now it shares that position with Half-Blood Prince (if you have read both you can probably guess what I liked about these two). I must admit part of what I loved about this book is that I felt I was looking for it for forever after having loved Philosopher's Stone- I must have missed it immediately though because I don't have a first, or even second edition. My joy when I found it, finally, though was so st How much I love his book, for the longest time it was my favourite Harry Potter book, and now it shares that position with Half-Blood Prince (if you have read both you can probably guess what I liked about these two). I must admit part of what I loved about this book is that I felt I was looking for it for forever after having loved Philosopher's Stone- I must have missed it immediately though because I don't have a first, or even second edition. My joy when I found it, finally, though was so strong.

I must admit this is the one book where I really like Ginny, and it's a book where we first really see her (apart from a small couple of glimpses in Philosopher's Stone) [highlight for spoiler]as well as a book where Ginny is a very important character. I guess I like the funny little moments when she is in front of Harry she seems so young and innocent and yes I think that picture of her is important, you would never in a million years suspect Ginny, or at least not until she was going to tell Harry and Ron.

Something I do find about the book though is that it really is very, very dark. I know they say that the books get darker, and maybe in ways they do, certainly there is more of a threat a little later on, but at least that threat is known. I mean nobody knows what is happening in the school, nobody knows who is controlling what is happening, and Harry is hearing voices in the wall. Sometimes an unknown horror is worse than one that you at least know something about, at least with the later books they knew the threat was Voldemort and they knew, at least up to a point what they would get from him. Even when you know what this horror is it still seems so unknown and impossible to control I mean even Voldemort can't kill you by simply looking at you! (As they say in Potterwatch (Deathly Hallows):

“So, people, let’s try and calm down a bit. Things are bad enough without inventing stuff as well. For instance, this new idea that You-Know-Who can kill with a single glance from his eyes. That’s a basilisk, listeners. One simple test: Check whether the thing that's glaring at you has got legs. If it has, it’s safe to look into its eyes, although if it really is You-Know-Who, that’s still likely to be the last thing you ever do.”

And that's not even mentioning giant spiders, or an angry Snape!

What I really like about this book though is the information we get about Tom Riddle. It's really interesting to see where he came from, and a bit of what he was like in school. I find it interesting that even early on I liked this aspect, even when I did not know how important it would turn out to be later on ...more

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