Got kids? Percy Jackson (and the other Rick Riordan written) series are great. Older kids? Get them reading chuck wendig or Margaret Killjoy.
Introduce yourself to Kafka and Marquez and Butler and Morrison and so many other great great writers who make JK Rowling look like the utter hack she is.
Definitely seconding this recommendation. I've really liked Margarets Killjoy's more adult sci-fi/fantasy output, for a long time. The Free Orcs of Cascadia is a personal favorite.
But she recently wrote a YA fantasy novel called The Sapling Cage which is really wonderful.
She's got a couple of different podcasts. Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff, which is a radical history podcast on the same podcast network as BTB, and Live Like The World is Dying which is a show about prepping.
My first exposure to her was actually by listening to an interview she did for the guerilla radio station operated out of The ZAD, which is in France, and is the largest Anarchist autonomous zone in Europe.
Honestly, just pick up any other book and give it a go, if that doesn't work drop it and pick up another one. Nothing depresses me more than those people - adults - who finish reading the last Harry Potter book and then pick up the first one and start over again. I've heard nothing but good things about Rick Riordan as far as getting kids into reading, that all happened a little after my time though (and I was already big into reading as a kid)
As someone who doesn't have the nostalgia goggles for HP, it's always insane to me how many adults still love that shit. They're YA novels... Like read a grown-up book, and maybe you'll realize how mediocre they were.
Not even a grown-up book! Read a different magical fantasy book aimed at children or teenagers. And see how good those are, too. Many of them were written before Harry Potter.
I do think HP is good at the pacing and mystery aspect of it. The magical world isn't really that alluring, unless you are a 12 year old kid in 2001 who never read another book until now.
The books are also good, but very different. The show creators made an excellent adaptation of the world and its energy and feeling, but changed characters and plot to something more suitable for a show. Both are great though.
I had someone recommend Rivers of London as an alternative magic learning protag series, and I’m enjoying it, but it’s more noir detective than Harry Potter. Which works in its favor IMO.
If anyone wants a suggestion may I suggest Yojou Senki/The Saga of Tanya the Evil, it's really good once you get past the fact that the English version devolves into technical documents at times. But the author apparently plays Hoi3, which honestly explains a lot about the books in general.