Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them

Long review alert! Of course this was a very interesting book to get to know about those magical beasts we have heard and seen about in all the movies/books and bonus that it is read by Eddie Redmayne <3 I do, however, have some reservations after listening to the audiobook. The first thing is that I had to turn this up so loud in order to hear Eddie's voice and the audio was not very well balanced while he was reading. And since I had to turn it up so loud, the background noises were startling and at times, annoying. I tried adjusting my device's audio settings, and nothing helped. Honestly, the book could do without the background noises, bit distracting. Second, I watched all of the movies before listening to any of the books, so of course when listening to the books, all the movies are a bit of a dissapointment and I understand there will always be major differences. The following is what bothered me about this book. Some of the descriptions of these beasts, leave you with "that's it?", just seems like not enough information. In the movie, you see how Newt is able to understand and interact with beasts, yet none of this is said in the book how to maybe safety interact or elude a beast. In the movie, the Demiguise is shown to have psycic abilities as premonitions; the occamy can shrink or expand to fit certain spaces; and the murtlap can have a fatal bite are never mentioned in the book. Lots of "Notes". Even after listening to the introduction "About this book" and getting to the end of the book, I guess I still don't understand what a "fantastic beast" is... There seemed to be soo many beasts missing. Since they are ranked from 1X to 5X; 1X being boring and 5X needing expert handling, I didn't understand why pigmipuffs, blast-ended skrewts, thestrals, qilin, etc. were not listed. Are there differences between magical animals, creatures, monsters, beasts? Not to mention all the supposed creatures Luna Lovegood says exist! These are just the questions I kept having to pause and rant about to my husband while we were listening to the book.

I absolutely loved it. I love learning about different aspects of the Wizarding world and I find the magical creatures fascinating. While not every creature is found in the book and not all the creatures in the book are the same in the movies, I find the guide extremely helpful and fascinating. I have gone back and reread it many times and learned something each time.
Hearing the book read by Mr. Scamander himself has made it even better! I have a feeling Tina would’ve loved this!

Thank you for such a wonderful story