I enjoyed it, but I never read the book...

I can see how people who were fans of the books would dislike whatever different direction the filmmakers went... But having never actually read them, I still feel like it was an enjoyable movie...

And for people who wanna obsess over whether any book is better than its movie, I say... Don't see it as a "betrayal to the original story" but a reimagining of it. After all, sometimes stories don't translate well to the screen. Sometimes the filmmakers can't keep certain elements of a story in, because it would be too long a movie, sometimes test audiences just don't react well to what you have and u gotta do reshoots.

The point is, I don't think it's fair to say that a movie is not as good as its source material. It can be just as good, just in a different way. It's a lot easier to cover more on paper. A few extra sheets of paper costs you pennies... A few extra minutes of FILMING could cost you tens to hundreds of thousands, maybe more... So it's not really surprising that no movie can "live up" to it's source material. There's just too much story to condense down to your target movie length.