The School for Good and Evil

Soman Chainani, the author of The School of Good and Evil, is coming to Read Up Greenville this year, so I was excited to read the first book in this series.  I’m always up for a twisted fairy tale (see my review on As Old As Time), however, this one fell a little flat for me.

Sophie and Agatha live in the tiny town of Gavaldon where all kids are obsessed with reading fairy tales…because every four years two children are kidnapped and then later appear INSIDE the fairy tale stories.  Sophie is sure she will be kidnapped because she’s been meticulously planning her good deeds to show she’s the best choice.  Her sullen and reclusive friend Agatha thinks Sophie’s crazy, but when the girls are kidnapped, they are dropped into their fates…Agatha’s dropped into the School of Good and Sophie’s dropped into the School of Evil.  Sure there’s been a mistake, the two friends try to figure out a way to change places and find their Happily Ever After.  Easier said than done since they are up against a mysterious School Master, wolf and fairy guards (more vicious than they sound), and stereotypical classmates who want them to fail.

What originally got me to pick this one up was the premise:  what happens when good and evil are switched?  What if both sides claim to be good?  I found the concept interesting, but the execution, for me, was off.  First, I really didn’t like the characters.  Their classmates were so stereotypical (the villains were all ugly, glowering, and bent on beating Good; the princesses were all beautiful but vapid and shallow and the princes were even worse).  Sophie and Agatha had some character development, but it was slow and repetitive and unbelievable by the end.  The other thing that bothered me was the plot.  The story is 488 pages…and it feels like it.  Some of the plot seems to be added just because they wanted the story to be longer instead of driving and adding to the central story.  It was just frustrating because I had such high hopes for this novel, and it didn’t meet my expectations.

Teens may still enjoy this book (and all the drama involved), but for me, it didn’t live up to the hype.