It was my first time reading through all of the Harry Potter books this year and I loved the experience so much. The books give so much more than the movies and honestly I don't know how the movies made sense to me before I read the books. There's so much that isn't explained and left out. Also my favourite characters interestingly switched from Remus Lupin to Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter.

I still love the movies though, and there are elements that did improve the story. For example, Alan Rickman gave Snape's character elements of emotion that I found the book Snape to be missing. I didn't feel empathy or any kind of sorry for the book character, but Rickman managed to completely turn that around with his performance.

Characters like Lupin and Sirius were also fleshed out better in the movies. Lupin is my favourite characters from the movies and I was so disappointed with his book character. He just felt flat, kind of unimportant and weirdly contradictory in terms of personality at times - but this may be because I was so used to the movie version.

There are a lot of plot holes as mentioned by many previous to me, and some plot devices that seem thrown in to fill in the story and just to give explanations for particular things. I still enjoyed it though. It was whimsical, so cosy, I loved the characters and the settings. I didn't want to put the books down and I am very sad to have completed the whole series now.

My favourites of the series I'd say are The Chamber of Secrets, The Goblet of Fire, and The Half Blood Prince.