As Charmed books go, this is a very good one. It begins with some non-magic conflict between the sisters. Phoebe is feeling under-appreciated by her sisters, who don’t realize she also has important things to do. Soon, everyone will see how important she is because during a battle with demons, Phoebe gets separated from her sisters. A knock on the head, and a spell from bad witches later, she’s convinced by the evil witches seeking amulets which will give them ultimate magical power, that she’s their good friend, Ruth, and together they battle evil.

Meanwhile back at Halliwell Manor, Leo can’t locate the missing Phoebe, and scrying doesn’t work either. As of yet, no one realizes what’s going on, or that a spell is preventing them from finding Phoebe, and keeping Phoebe’s memories of Piper and Paige buried. While Ruth/Phoebe helps her “sister” witches retrieve the amulets, despite a feeling of unease, Piper and Paige have to deal with Flector demons, and could really use the power of three. They could also use Phoebe on the home-front. Piper and Paige have a house full of magical creatures demanding the counseling and advice session promised them by Phoebe.

While the magical creature part of the story can get a bit frivolous at times, and the bad witches’ interactions with Ruth a tad tiring, things get much better once Paige encounters Phoebe and her fellow “good” witches in action, and realizes Phoebe has completely forgotten her real sisters. It’s all well written, and for the most part pretty enjoyable. The conclusion helped a great deal, as it was both exciting and fun, and had a couple of wonderful moments between sisters toward the end. It very much retained the feel of the show, so gets high marks on that front.

Probably a 4.2 for me, just because a few frivolous moments bored me, and the series works best when all three sisters have more scenes together. Overall, however, this is a very enjoyable entry which captured nicely the feel of the series. Highly recommended for fans of the show as a light and entertaining read which now has the added bonus of being nostalgic; this show debuted two decades ago! My, how time flies… ( )

This review was originally posted on October 16, 2012 on Melissa's Midnight Musings

As long time readers of this blog will know, I love Charmed. Some might say I'm slightly obsessed, even. So, since I read two review books in a row, I decided to use this book to break things up a little bit before I moved on to my next review title. These stories don't have a whole lot of depth to them so this will be a relatively short review.

In terms of the plot, this would have made a good episode. But, that's also where it was lacking. It used elements that were very similar to actual episodes so the new factor wasn't really there. It was still likeable though. I enjoyed the fact that the magical creatures had come to Phoebe asking her advice. I think that would have been interesting to see an episode with that story line being that when members of the magical community needed help in the show, they were usually prone to turning to Paige for that.

There were a few points that I didn't care for, particularly that the author started calling Phoebe by the name of Ruth right after she got amesia. I know why she did it, but I guess the transition wasn't all that smooth because it was confusing for a while. Then there were a few spots that felt like filler that could have been removed. In terms of it being similar to other episodes it was, but there were some good details in the story despite that fact.

Overall, this was an enjoyable enough story that would have made a decent episode in the show, it's just not one of my favorites.

Do any of you read Charmed novels or watch the show? If so which is your favorite book/episode?
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