Totally Charmed
Reviewed by Tim McCree
November 2005

BOOK: Totally Charmed
AUTHOR:  Various - edited by Jennifer Crusie
NOTE: This review may contain plot spoilers.

    There is an old saying, never judge a book by its cover, well that REALLY applies here.  This book is an unauthorized work about Charmed from a different publisher than the usual Charmed books (which is Simon & Schuster).  Benbella Books (whoever they are, I myself have never heard of them) put this one out.  I read it today and I wish to God that I hadn't!  By the cover, you expect to get a funny tabloid look at Charmed and its characters (the characters, that is, not the actors), so that is what I expected when I started on this book.
 
Boy, I sure was wrong on THAT count!
 
Instead I found a book full of one mind-numbingly dull chapter after another. I swear that there were times I wanted to close my eyes and fall asleep!  Each of the chapters were written by a different author, but I really couldn't tell, because they were mostly the same to me, namely boring!  Aside from being tedious and bland, most of the chapters took nearly FOREVER to get to their main point.  I often found myself skipping ahead a few pages just to see what point the author was trying to make.  I kept muttering: "Come on, stop droning and get to the point already!" 
 
Frankly, I can't help but wonder what the heck they were thinking when they put this book out.  As I mentioned above, the cover fools you into thinking this book is something that it's not, well, the chapter titles are the same.  They throw witty ones at you like 'Why Are The Elders Such Jerks'?.  When you see that, you expect to read a chapter that really rips into the Elders, at least that is what I expected.  Instead you get yet another boring and droning chapter that seemingly rambles on forever, before getting to the point.  Also, when it does get to the point, said point is so blase one has to wonder if it was worth the time to get there.   Unfortunately, all the chapters are like this.
 
Another failure of the book is that the authors literally spend pages telling us stuff we already know.  What is the point of endlessly analyzing the sisters and their powers when the average Charmed fan will already have this info?  After all, this is a show that most of us have been following for more than half-a-decade now.   So giving us this information is simply not necessary.


The book is divided into three sub sections and each sub section contains a few of the chapters I mentioned above.  The chapters are written by various authors, but I don’t think I want to name names here, because of the poor quality of the work.  They really missed the ball on this one!
 
There was one, I repeat, ONE, chapter that I found even remotely interesting.  This was the one where they told the story of how they had to replace Prue.  Of course, they didn't mention anything I didn't already know, but I did find it mildly interesting.  Which is more than I can say for the rest of this book.
 
I think part of the problem is that most of the authors in this book are fiction authors.  When writing fiction, it is normal to have long narrative chapters to build up the story.  However, when writing for a book like this, short and to the point are the preferred method.  I think someone forgot to tell these authors this when they got the assignment to work on this book.
 
For the first time, I am giving a book a big, fat ZERO! 
 
My advice to you, Charmed Fans, save your money, put this book back on the shelf, it is simply not worth it.  Unless you need something to help put you to sleep, you can skip this one.

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