'Loveliest Thing': JK Rowling Reacts To Indian Author Who Once Stole A Harry Potter Book

Almost two decades ago, the Harry Potter books were the hottest commodity amongst kids. People would line up to get their hands on the latest edition of the fantasy book. Reese Thomas, an assistant director in the Malayalam film industry and a newly minted author, was one of the kids who badly wanted a Harry Potter book. However, his parents refused to get him one and over that his classmates challenged him to steal the freshly released Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. On a fateful day in 2007, Reese Thomas, who was in Class 9, went to his local bookstore in Kerala’s Muvattupuzha and shoplifted the book.

Now 17 years later, Reese Thomas returned to New College Bookstall, but this time to put his first book on sale. The author of ’90s Kid offered to pay for the stolen copy of Harry Potter but the bookstore owner took the theft in jest, even though he remembers the incident. Reese Thomas told The Hindu, that after he stole the book he was terrified of returning to New College Bookstall, fearing that he would be confronted. He said, “Over the years, once I started earning, I wanted to pay for it, but I could not bring myself to because I was afraid to.”

On Tuesday, the author of Harry Potter books commented on Reese Thomas’s journey from being a “book thief” to an author himself. She shared an article about Reese Thomas that mentioned how he is now selling his first book at the same bookstore from where he once stole a Harry Potter book. She wrote, “I know I’ll be accused of encouraging book stealing by sharing this, so PLEASE DON’T STEAL BOOKS, BOOK STEALING IS BAD. Anyway, this is the loveliest thing and made me really happy.”

Reese Thomas later shared a screenshot of this X post on his Instagram and expressed his happiness at JK Rowling’s acknowledgement of his story.

He wrote, “Wait… Let me take a deep breath and hold my excitement. I wanna say, am on cloud nine or am out of the moon at this moment. Yas, finally she read it and shared it on her official Twitter guys. This happiness is damn out of the world.”