I’ve been reading the books in the *Practical Magic* series by Alice Hoffman, and they’ve mostly been pleasant, easy reads. So today I open up the final book. I’m on page 6, and already I’ve been hit with the three different examples of inconsistencies from former books. It makes me want to DNF this one, honestly.
Most egregious: a character who was killed in the original book from being struck as a pedestrian by a car full of drunk teenagers is now said to have been struck by lightning. (Other characters in that book had been, but not this one.) I suppose there’s a chance that “struck by lightning” could have been meant to be taken figuratively, but it doesn’t read that way at all.
Honorable Mentions: pages from a journal are now said to have been framed and placed up on a library wall since two of the older characters were children, but we were told in the last book that one of them did that herself when she was an adult as her first act as a member on the library’s board. One of the characters has never been ill a day in her life, but she had the flu in a previous book that was significant because it ultimately led to a deeper connection with a former foe (not to mention a hospital stay for a traumatic injury that left her scarred for life and a significant depression that followed in which she was suicidal). In the previous book, the author goes out of her way several times to say that members of the family are always buried in black with bare feet, and yet when one of them dies the family dresses her in white. No explanation why.
So what other examples of internal inconsistencies have ruined books for you?
by Rooney_Tuesday