Okay, whenever anyone has finished and wants to discuss, dive in.

JKR once said that "Readers like to be tricked, but not conned." I'm feeling TOTALLY CONNED right now.

About one line was devoted to Harry dealing with Sirius's death and his grief. Right... he just lost the closest thing to a parent to him and he talked himself out of that grief in two weeks.

Hermione has no lasting effects from the curse that hit her in OOTP? Oh, wait, yes she does. She's undergone a complete personality transformation. Who was that girl with the bushy brown hair?

Thoughts leave the deepest scars according to OOTP, but the only problem Ron seems to have is which skirt to chase. I could see him getting involved with Luna who had a huge crush on him, but Lavendar?

Most of all....WTF is up with Supper Ginny Sue? Where/when/how did Harry start to notice her? Are we really supposed to buy this Ginny thing? She's the ultimate Mary Sue.... everyone likes her, she's smart, she's funny, she's pretty.... she's fake. This has got to be some kind of set up. There's too much talk of love potions.

The idea of horcruxes is really cool. The inferi, I could live without. But aside from that, when it comes to the dialogue and the intereaction among the kids, I felt like I was reading REALLY BAD fan fiction. The big death was what had to happen, I know and it was moving. I'm a little surprised at the twist over who killed Dumbledore though.

The ending was as weak as the Ginny plot. This book did not follow up the first 5 well.

In some ways I feel like she's paying too much attention to the phenomenon she's created. I don't really recall Ron having a thing for Rosmerta except in the movie, yet he does in this book. JKR said shrunken heads didn't exist in her world, but lo and behold they were mentioned here. And, while it was cute, it was also distrating to have Slughorn refer to Ron as Rupert.

WEAK boook! I hope this is some kind of elaborate set up to really disarm us for the 7th book.

Becky