Well, last book it was my daughter who was waiting eagerly for it's arrival, bouncing from foot to foot while watching for the courier that Saturday morning. This time I found it was me that kept circling by and peeking out the front window until the courier arrived with a "Harry Potter's here!". I raced through my first reading of the book over the weekend and finally finished it tonight and can definitely give it a 2 thumbs up. I must admit that I began reading it with a hope that Harry's character had grown out of his whiny brat-ness of the last book and was pleased to find that he has! That one thing made it so much more enjoyable than book 5. As well, the plot seemed tighter where book 5 dragged on a bit. But the ending was quite a shock and unfortunate in many ways. It will be interesting to see in book 7 if her killing off this particular character was necessary to move the overarching plot forward, or simply some gratuitous violence for shock value.