The School for Good and Evil (The School for Good and Evil, #1)
by Soman Chainani (Goodreads Author),Iacopo Bruno (Illustrator)

3 out of 5 stars

Sophie and Agatha are kidnapped and taken to the School for Good and Evil where villains and princesses are trained to follow their own fairy tales. Beautiful Sophie is put in the school for evil to train as a witch, and brooding Agatha is placed in the school for good to become a princess. At first, the girls think they must have been mistakenly placed in the wrong schools, but they gradually realize that the magic can see into their innermost hearts. The girls refuse to conform to the school’s training, insisting that good and evil can be friends, but are they right? Can Sophie and Agatha continue to be friends when everything in the fairy tale world is pushing them apart?

I really liked the exploration of the true nature of good and evil. The plot takes our characters back and forth between good and evil as they make mistakes and try to adapt to the school’s expectations and discover their own deeper personalities. Sophie really does have an evil streak, but she is also capable of good. And Agatha finds that true beauty is not in how you look, but how you behave.

I loved the interesting world-building of the fairy tale school. Everyone is under a curse to follow their own fairy tale destiny, and if they fail in the classes, they will be punished and transformed into an animal or a gargoyle or some kind of troll. I loved the fairy tale history and the magic system and the wacky classes at the school!

There were too many supporting characters for me to keep track of them all, but they are mainly clumped into good and evil, with a few memorable characters with special abilities/magic. Tedros is the son of King Arthur, and he is very suspicious of everyone because his father was betrayed by Guinevere, so he is wary of being betrayed as well. He gets in the middle of the tug-of-war between Sophie and Agatha, and the lines between love and hate get blurry.

The plot moves really quickly, so if you miss something then it’s easy to get lost. I’m still not quite sure what exactly happened at the end. It’s like magic things are happening, but it’s not really explained why this or that magic thing happened. I had to go back and read the last few paragraphs twice to try to make sense of it. I feel like a lot of things could have been better explained. Maybe it’s supposed to remain mysterious.

I partly read this book with my eyes and partly listened to the audiobook narrated by Polly Lee. The narration was okay, but not great.

This book has been screened for some mild and violence and dark magic content on the Screen It First website. https://screenitfirst.com/book/the-school-for-good-and-evil-book-1-116578