This is a fantasy adventure where two children are stolen and forced to attend a school of good and evil. Although, they are split up and put into the opposite school they initially thought they were going to be in. ( )

No one knows a girls’ friendship like a guy, amIrite? Just kidding, totally sexist of me, just like this entire hetronormative mess of a Hogwarts derivative with more contradictory messaging than a Miss Universe pagent. It can’t decide if it wants to deconstruct fairy tales or affirm them (think Shrek, with less humor); similarly, the definitions of ‘beauty’ and ‘ugly’ (I hearby challenge Chainani to read [b:The Beauty Myth|39926|The Beauty Myth|Naomi Wolf|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1388197585l/39926._SY75_.jpg|836516] by Naomi Wolf), as well as definitions of ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ I will tell you the truth: what it ultimately does is affirm all of those things in the most conventional fashion. (In some cases, literally through fashion.) Add the final scene, which will feel like a semi-cliff-hanger to some, and you have a hot mess of a book.

Chainani clearly did his Rowling research and thought “how can I capitalize on this magical school goldmine?” But instead of wasting time in the mundane world and spreading development over seven books, he accelerates full speed into the magical school with classes, contests, secret night adventures, and survival in the woods. There’s a remote castle in the woods where ‘Good’ and ‘Evil’ are taught. There are teachers who are present but have virtually no authority and a mysterious School Master. Magical creatures abound to enforce the rules. There is even a culminating trial where only one house/side can win (and it’s been Good for two hundred years), followed by a fancy dress ball. If all of this sounds Potter-iffic, I think that’s because it’s meant to, and I believe that’s why it appeals to many readers despite it’s inherent and profuse problems.

The lead characters are Sophie, a beauty-obsessed twelve year-old looking for a Prince, and Agatha, the introverted and ‘ugly’ daughter of a village ‘witch,’ and her only friend. Every four years, two children disappear from this isolated village, perhaps to become lead characters in a future fairy tale. One person becomes the ‘good’ character and one person the ‘bad' lead. Sophie’s been primping for the ‘Good’ role for years (because according to their definitions, ‘good’ means ‘lovely,’ along with a token good deed or two). However, when Sophie is kidnapped, Agatha follows, trying to save her friend. Pink and primped Sophie is dropped at the dark, scary School for Evil, staffed by wolves and goblins, and homely, sloppy Agatha is left at the School for Good, staffed by fairies and princesses. Although she's certain she's in the wrong school, Sophie still sees it as the chance to find her Prince while Agatha focuses on returning home.

Worth seeing what happens, maybe? At first, Chainani seems to be doing something interesting with making both schools equally horrible, just using a different kind of metric. Also like Hogwarts, we get a variety of hands-on learning, but what’s unique is that it is about being ‘ugly’ or ‘beautiful’ as much as magic. Classes on the ‘good’ side include 'how to be beautiful,' and classes on the ‘evil’ side include ‘uglification.' (It's worth noting that classes follow conventional definitions of these words).

Eventually some classes are combined between Team Good and Team Evil so that we get to see the two interact. These situations particularly suck because the lessons in ‘identifying good’ and ‘identifying your prince/princess,’ set up Sophie and Agatha in opposition to each other over a particularly heroic Prince. Sophie becomes obsessed with the idea that she is both in the wrong school and deserves the Prince while Agatha spends her time helping Sophie achieve her goal, because a kiss from a Prince will solve a riddle.

So, let’s see: a three-way love triangle. Attractiveness is about your image, not your behaviors. Friendship is a tool to accomplish a goal. Being the subservient ‘helper-friend’ is okay, as long as your friend does some personal growth in the end. Girls operating under the philosophy of “If your true love kisses you, then you can’t be a villain,” with the corollary, “For every Ever, there is only one true love,” followed by “So if a girl doesn’t get asked to the Ball, then she fails and suffers a punishment worse than death. But if a boy doesn’t go to the Ball, he gets half ranks.” Categories of good and evil both suck, except when they don’t. Friendship means being a doormat to your friend’s needs, and not expecting reciprocation in respect or understanding.

Do I have that about right? Man (again, I mean this literally), this is some stellar messaging.

I had stayed with it because–major spoiler here–I had read Agatha and Sophie kiss at the end, so I thought the path getting there was going to be normative-deconstructive.

Spoiler: It wasn’t. It was super hetro-normative. And total nonsense, by the way. If you read enough of your fairy tales, you know that evil comes in very beautiful disguises (all the better to fool you with), and that the quality of most young heroes and heroines isn’t that they are beautiful, but that they are kind (to animals, to mysterious old ladies, etc) and that trying to ‘win’ anything without humility only gets you bloody feet, thrown in prison, turned into a goose, or other terrible things.

I would never, ever, ever, recommend this book to anyone, and certainly never give it to a young woman as a present (it's so girl-beauty centric, it's clearly not meant for hetro-norm boys). [b:Castle Hangnail|22504710|Castle Hangnail|Ursula Vernon|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1408312316l/22504710._SX50_.jpg|41951499] takes a much better look at an essentially ‘good’ girl trying on an ‘evil’ role for young people. My ultimate standard of how you can really start deconstructing ‘good’ and ‘bad’ is The Good Place–which would have been expecting a lot, I grant you, but I was at least hoping for some elementary work on what ‘good’ really means. Since Chainani never separated out the idea of ‘ugly’ from ‘bad,’ and ‘good’ from ‘beautiful,’ I guarantee that both this book and any tie-ins aren’t going to win any Good Awards in my world.

One-and-a-half-stars, rounding down because I read the next book is even worse with it's messaging.

Update: so this is a movie/series now? Gross. More people looking at a cash cow and not for the next generation of queens. ( )

Initial Thoughts

I heard really good things about this book so my expectations were higher.

My New BFF

I liked Agatha more than Sophie. I found Sophie shallow and annoying which was probably done on purpose. I was annoyed with how Agatha depended on Sophie and was glad when she started breaking away. I liked how much growth we saw in Agatha and was really impressed with how she turned out. I’m looking forward to seeing how much she grows in the next book.

My Crush

I really liked Tedros even though he was a pretty typical male character. He did start evolving farther into the book though which saved him a little. I especially loved how he was absolutely sure he was good and always did the right thing. He is a teenager though so sometimes his emotions got in the way but that made him more realistic than some of the other characters. We didn’t see a whole lot of him in this book but I hope he becomes more prominent during the series.

Writing Style

I loved how we never quite knew what was going on. The character makes you think like their not at the right school but then you have suspicions that they really aren’t. Then the characters do something and you’re so sure they’re in the right schools. It’s all a mess but it was great. I felt like some of the characters weren’t as developed as they should have been but the world building was fantastic.

Closing Thoughts

I think this is a really unique series. I loved that it wasn’t a fairy tale retelling but more of a continuation of the modern day fairy tales. So if you like retellings but you’re getting a little bored then give this series a shot. It is aimed at more of a younger audience but I feel like anyone can enjoy it anyways. The characters are younger but it’s written with a slightly older voice. I’m glad I decided to give this book a shot and I’ll be reading the next one shortly! ( )

Fun book to read. ( )

Wow! This book has such an interesting premise. What would you do if someone told you that you were evil? I felt bad for poor Sophie. I loved that Agatha was determined to help her friend no matter what. The ending was a bit surprising. I really didn't see that coming. Overall, an excellent start to a series that I have to read more of. ( )

4 ( )

{first in series; fantasy, YA}(2013/2022)

Sophie lives in the village of Gavaldon which is surrounded by woods and the only way to leave is - if you're kidnapped by the School Master as a child and reappear in the fairy tales which are read so eagerly by all the children in the village. So every four years all the parents board up their children's windows. Good children are entreated to do bad deeds or muddy their faces; naught children are encouraged to clean up and be nice. But Sophie's ambition has always been to be a princess. This year will be when she falls into the age bracket (12-16) and she's determined to be kidnapped chosen so she determinedly does her good deeds which are going to see Agatha, who looks like a witch, to be her friend.

By hook or by crook the two girls end up at the Hogwarts-like School for Good and Evil, where fairytale heroes, princesses (because they're not heroes) and villains are trained. But Sophie is sent to the School for Evil and Agatha is sent to the School for Good and then spend a lot of time, between lessons, with Agatha trying to convince Sophie they need to go home and Sophie trying to switch schools while both of them try to convince their classmates that they're not evil. (Sophie's roommates believe that she's in Evil because she belongs there while Agatha's classmates judge by the way she looks and dresses.)

And behind the scenes, the School Master and the Storian are writing their fairytale.

This got off to a slow start for me but then picked up. Though the premise looked straightforward enough I couldn't tell where it was going which seemed like a good thing. Agatha and Sophie did manage to solve the School Master's riddle so I thought they could go home - but at that point I was only halfway through the book. I was confused by a lot of the word choices which didn't make sense (to me) in the context but it was easy enough to skip past and not be thrown out of the story.

I couldn't work out how old the children were but, given the princesses' focus on boys, I presume they must be closer to sixteen rather than any of them being twelve. There is some death (including of animals) and even killing (though not gory) so I wouldn't rate this as a children's book. I also couldn't tell if their class was the only one in the school or if there were other children in other years, even when it came to the final battle. And maybe it doesn't matter whether they behave well or badly once they're in their schools? I couldn't tell. But, to be honest, I gave up trying to keep track of who was being good or evil on the day and just read the story.

My overall impression is that the book was a bit confused and confusing; chapter 25 especially was all over the place. If there was a message or a point, I'm not quite sure what it was; it looked like it would be one thing, then another and then ... and finally ...?

I don't think I will be continuing with this series but it does seem to be popular to the extent that it has been turned into a film. {I read this in April but am posting my review now. I've put 3-3.5 stars; I remember it more as a 3 star but I seem to have leaned towards 3.5 stars at the time. I'll go with my initial rating since I gave it when the book was fresh in my mind.}

(April 2024)
3-3.5 stars ( )

Quite amusing. At times really funny, but I am not sure I bought the characters. The good one seemed to be too sceptical to be this naive, and the bad one made a choice in the end that didn't seem in character. And despite the fact that the system was flawed, it seems to me the selection process for the good guys should have been better. I did like the discussion of good and evil in general. The problem was that there aren't too many characters to root for. The bad guys were, well, bad, and the good guys were mostly vacuous morons who care most about looks. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. It was a prefect fairytale story. I thought it was a tad on the longer side but that was not a bad thing. I really enjoyed both main characters and how the sides of good and evil and who is that and who is not changed throughout the novel. I loved the fairytale lore that was created for this story. It was a complicated story that lost me at points but i really liked the messages and the characters of this story. ( )

I really enjoyed this book. It was a prefect fairytale story. I thought it was a tad on the longer side but that was not a bad thing. I really enjoyed both main characters and how the sides of good and evil and who is that and who is not changed throughout the novel. I loved the fairytale lore that was created for this story. It was a complicated story that lost me at points but i really liked the messages and the characters of this story. ( )

Independent reading level: 3+
Awards: Waterstone's Children's Book Prize

Representation: N/A?
Trigger warnings: N/A?
Score: Six points out of ten.
This review can also be found on The StoryGraph.

Very chaotic, I did not enjoy this book at all, it is nowhere near the level of the Harry Potter series, by J.K. Rowling, or the Keeper of the Lost Cities series, by Shannon Messenger, go read those instead for a better story about a fantasy boarding school. It starts with the main characters Sophie and Agatha and Sophie wanted to be put on the Good side whereas Agatha wanted to be on the Evil side but much to their surprise they got the opposite of what they wanted which is a cheap way to pull of a plot twist. This novel ultimately wasn't enjoyable because both sides of the school kept fighting over each other, and even started a war however at least that made the book more action-packed. The apparently "Good" side turned out to be just as bad as the Evil side because they wanted to kill them. The students also experienced harsh abuse in the school as well, such as the burning iron shoes and the failure system which I didn't like. There were flashes of good moments interspersed in this book however that did not do enough for me to put this above 3 stars. The two main characters were just unlikeable, underdeveloped and kept fighting over each other just like the rest of the school however now that I think about it that was the entire point of the story so there's that. ( )

I did not like this book. I thought it was going to deconstruct old fashioned gender stereotypes, but it kept swerving around and hitting them head on. Not a fun read.

Rating: 4.5/5

I had no idea that I would be so absorbed into the story. It was very hard to put down. I was so invested in the characters that I was frantically praying that their story goes a certain way.

I was so frustrated with all the ideologies that were being imparted to the students just like Agatha was and I'm so happy that she managed to triumph over a lot of them. The ending was brilliant.

Also, appreciation for how amazing Professor Sader was ❤️ ( )

A twisted fairy tale of sorts, this book follows Agatha and Sophie as they are kidnapped and sent to separate schools for Fairy-tale royalty or witches and goblins. However, they are accidentally enrolled into the wrong schools.
There are some surprisingly dark twists to this story- such as the fate of the children who are not perfect princesses or witches. But the middle of the book is really too long and drags on a long time before the action at the end.

library book read 6/22/2023 ( )

Sophie hesitated. “Well, it’s just that in fairy tales, different usually turns out, um . . . evil.”
“You’re saying I’m going to turn out a Grand Witch,” said Agatha, hurt.
“I’m saying whatever happens, you’ll have a choice,” Sophie said gently. “Both of us will choose how our fairy tale ends.”

3.5 stars?
I really loved the clever way this book played with fairytale tropes of good and evil and spun them around.
Good only defends and talks to animals, evil must destroy their nemesis or they will not be happy.
Yet Sophie uses ‘good’ animals for ‘evil’ by making bees sting and Agatha wishes for something truly Good instead of true love because she thinks true love is not for the likes of her.
I also liked the grim tone, reminiscent of old fairytales. The school makes their top students villains, their average students henchmen and dooming those who fail to life as a creature.
The whole fairytale world has its cracks. Evil is not truly evil, if they have friends and Good is not truly good if they fail their students like that.
The concept that Sophie was never truly ‘Good’ and her good deeds were only to get into the school of Good made for a truly interesting corruption arc, while Agatha’s insistence on being bitter and average looking questions whether ‘Good’ in this world focuses too much on appearances.

However, some fairytale tropes felt annoyingly basic. For a book that is meant to subvert and play around with stock elements, some were used in a very standard way.
The true love’s kiss from a prince Sophie barely knows is used as a serious plot point. She doesn’t know him? And they’re 13? This would have been a great opportunity to twist the idea of fairytale true love but the book doesn’t.
Secondly, the fact that ‘good’ is filled with pretty blonde princesses and sword fighting knights while ‘evil’ has ugly dark haired witches with terrible curses feels off. What about all the kids who are just born with dark hair? Are they all Agatha, doomed to question whether their appearance makes them evil?
I know Agatha’s story is about learning that she is still good despite her appearance, but why is it necessary for every not blonde person to go through ChARActer DEVELopmENT go gain the confidence blond people are gifted naturally ( )

3,5 ( )

That was enjoyable, with some mysteries to unravel.
I think some of the action scenes were hard to follow, and got annoyed by some phrases that popped up multiple times like "Her lips grazed her ear" (something like that).
But I had fun with this book, looking forward to the movie coming out soon. ( )

This was a great premise but the execution is all over the place. I liked how it ended but the narrative is hard to follow, like the author never really decided how the story would get to that conclusion. ( )

There were times (a great many) when Agatha was terribly infuriatingly Pathetic. She continues to be so till the end.

So I'm going to wait for Book 3 to make a final verdict.
Because so far the series is a mixed bag of murky deeply conflicted feelings on my side.
Some good, excellent things. Some groan-inducing things.

Waiting on Book 3. ( )

Great reimagining of what fairy tales are all about, with some pointed commentary on the nature of princesses and heroes in our modern culture.

Excellent story of two best friends who are whisked off to the terrifying and fabled School for Good and Evil, where one will become the wickedest of witches, and the other's compassionate nature will reveal her to be the most lovely spirited of princesses. At least, that's how it's supposed to work. But Agatha (witch) and Sophie (princess) accidentally get dropped into the wrong schools, and end up re-writing all the tales. A fresh and sometimes humorous take on the subject, with plot twist after plot twist to keep the action moving along.

I particularly like how incidental the prince is to the story. This is a story about a friendship between girls. Girls have complicated friendships, and this one is a doozy. ( )

I feel like this is when my love of fantasy truly truly began where I began to read more of it.
I found this so imaginative and it kind of gave me ever after high vibes but this was different. So the main premise is really this:

The School for Good and Evil focuses on two girls from a village named Gavaldon, Sophie and Agatha. Sophie is a little bit of a snob, gorgeous, pretty and shallow. Agatha is ugly, insecure, but very kind. They live in a world in which fairytales happen, and every 4 years, one kind and one cruel child respectively, from their village are taken, never to return. Years later, their faces may pop up in a new storybook. So the book takes place during a year that the kidnapping will happen, Agatha doesn't want to go while Sophie wants to, Sophie gets taken and Agatha follows. They end up at a school, Sophie is dumped on the evil side, Agatha, the good side. They think it's a mistake but it's not.

There was a lot of information unpacked throughout the book and I really liked the coven, I'm also jealous of Dot's talent with chocolate. 4/5 stars.
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Strong beginning but really lackluster ending arc. Finale is pretty ok though ( )

There's a reason all these books are "Available Now" on Libby. And I get snookered every time.
I wouldn't say this anti-fairytale was predictable. But it certainly wasn't surprising watching the plot reveal itself. There are other books in this series. They will remain undiscovered by this reader. ( )

The School for Good and Evil was one of those books where I just go ‘Omg I NEED to read this book, asap’ as soon as I see even the tiniest smidgen of an excerpt. To be fair, maybe I shouldn’t have gone by one teeny tiny excerpt (literally one sentence) alone. Maybe I also shouldn’t have projected what I personally was looking for in fairy tale retellings for years now onto this story. You see, what I thought when I first saw this teeny tiny smidgen of an excerpt floating around, was that this would be a ‘We don’t need boys to be great’ book. Don’t get me wrong, there are several YA heroes that I adore – controversial as he is, I still want to wrap Divergent’s Four in my arms and give him hot chocolate and tell him that everything’s gonna turn out fine – but wouldn’t it be great if a re-interpretation of the genre of fairy tales itself (what The School for Good and Evil seems to want to be) actually broke with the tradition of ‘every princess needs a prince’?

Of course, this way of thinking does exist in the book. Agatha, our unlikely princess, keeps this opinion throughout the story, and is thoroughly (and rightfully) shocked when she learns what repercussions not having a date for the Snow Ball has for princesses, and how slight the consequences of the very same failure are for the princes of the School for Good. Sadly, like it happens several times in this book, she needs her prince in the end. Even though – and this is definitely a point for this book – Tedros, our handsome, valiant, Son-of-King-Arthur Love Interest for both Sophie and Agatha, doesn’t get to save Aggy, it does become very clear that princes are indispensable for princess tales to work, at least in Soman Chainani’s world. But well – that’s what you get for getting illusions about what sort of literature can get on the New York Time Bestseller list. (However, if somebody doesn’t write me Middle Grade Girl-loves-Girl fairy tale fantasy soon, I might have to do so myself.)

Now, this review sounds rather negative at the moment, I know – but to say the truth? I still loved The School for Good and Evil a lot, and I will get the second book as soon as I can get my hands on it. It did have a lot of flaws, and I will talk about these in detail in a second, but first I want to talk about something that I absolutely adored – the concept of the main characters.

Let’s look at Sophie first. Oh, Sophie… Not-actually-sweet, egomaniacal, vain Sophie… I simply cannot remember when I last found a villain who was so utterly, inadvertently sympathetic to me. Sophie thinks she is a Princess – Sophie works to become a Princess – Sophie completely and utterly fails to understand that you should never have to TRY to be Good in order to be a real Princess (or that putting up mirrors in church toilets or donating face wash to orphans aren’t actually ‘good deeds’). Sophie is so utterly egocentric that she can’t even imagine that Good could be anything but what she herself would feel good about. Which, really, amounts to looking good. She just is such a perfect Villain, even though she doesn’t see that herself, that just watching her do her unintentionally evil deeds is absolutely delightful. And goodness gracious, her nefarious plots at the end! Too bad she’s likely not going to end up as an actual fairy tale villain in any of the next books, because I’m sure she’d be absolutely and utterly epic.

Aggy now is a lot more common of a heroine than the author would like to let us think. She’s an outsider, she’s not pretty, she lives in a house on a graveyard with her vicious cat and her witchy mother. Of course, outsiders are generally perfect protagonists, and I never for a moment believed she could ever actually be a villain, no matter how much she is fascinated by dark magic and similar things she picks up from the School of Evil through Sophie. She is the sort of good person who can’t not do good deeds, who couldn’t possibly harm anybody, who does not care for good looks because she knows that there are more important things than that. It’s really no wonder that she did become a princess.

The best thing about these two characters – even better than Sophie’s inability to understand Good or Aggy’s horror of her own fascination with Evil – was their unlikely friendship. Initiated by Sophie as a ‘Good Deed’, the two of them are connected by their loneliness. Because even despite Sophie’s beauty and ‘Goodness’ and princess ways, she seems to be deeply, utterly lonely, and so is Aggy, and from this nearly co-dependent relationship develops a wonderful friendship, which will be severely strained and even betrayed later. But if it hadn’t been genuine and wonderful to start with, the later betrayals would not hurt even half as good as they do.

Okay, now back to the things that could have been awesome, but sadly were not. When I started reading the book, I posted an excited post on my tumblr blog about how I hoped so so so much that Sophie would embrace her inner villainess and would triumph as an Evil Witch in a pink dress and with her golden hair in an impeccable braid, and that Aggy would learn that not only pretty girls could be princesses.

Well, I don’t want to tell too much, but let’s just say, those hopes were absolutely in vain.

I’m going to be honest here, I liked the concept of ‘ugliness is something desirable for villains’. I liked that Chainani let them be unapologetically disgusting. ‘Beautiful Evil’ is absolutely overused in my opinion (and it very often coincides with tropes like The Vamp or Hot Guys Are Bastards). But – beauty is such an important part of Sophie’s character, her vanity is such an important part of what makes her Evil, it’s just such an absolute shame that this was not explored further in the book.

I think Chainani missed a great opportunity by playing the ‘Good is Beautiful, Evil is Ugly’ concept straight. If you do good deeds, you become beautiful – if you do bad deeds, you become ugly: This seems to be the moral of the book, and I really hope that nobody thinks that this is an acceptable thing to suggest. Especially since the Beautiful Princesses in the School of Good are not acting Good at all, actually. And here is another problem I have with the book – all the Good Girls are airheaded, boy-crazy, mean bimbos who do not care for anything but for their looks. This is a stupid, clichéd image of pretty girls that does not hold water in the real world – and not even in fairy tales! Princesses are supposed to be selfless, kind, modest, tolerant – not dolls whose biggest wish is to be asked to a ball by a boy and who think every person who is not pretty must be a villain in disguise (though to say the truth, Snow White would have been spared quite a bit of trouble if she’d been that sort of girl).

Another major problem I’ve got with this novel is the treatment of the only not conventionally slim character: Dot. Dot is a wonderfully sweet little Witch who loves chocolate a lot and helps Sophie out when most other students in the School for Evil would like nothing better than put her in a cauldron and turn her into Princess-soup. Nevertheless, she is constantly humiliated by the narrative; the farther the story progresses, the weaker she is portrayed, which is reinforced by her being connected with a lot of outright toilet humor (because you know, fat people lose control of their body functions). As much as I love the originality of this book, making the only fat girl in your book the butt of so many jokes is just lazy, prejudiced writing.

There are quite a few moral problems in this book, but The School for Good and Evil also has a few shortcomings when it comes to the mere craft of writing. Let’s come to one thing that nearly no novel ever seems to do absolutely right: The ending.

The School for Good and Evil has quite a number of villains – after all, half of the book is set at the place where villains are made. The main villain, however, only slowly seeps into the story, and his very sudden, very unreasonable behavior at the end left a strange taste in my mouth. The ending was too fast, like in so many novels, and far too hasty. Everything happens at once, we get a huge revelation out of nowhere, and then it’s over, and see you in the next book. An unsatisfactory, strange ending.

But even though this review seems to paint a very bad image of the book, there were several details that I loved. One thing that I adored was the absolute and utter bizarreness of the Mogrifs (you will know what I’m talking about if you read the book), which shows an interpretation of fairy tales that isn’t just your run-of-the-mill fairy tale gone bad, but an outright philosophical take to fantasy as a genre. There have been several scenes on Aggy’s Road to Goodness that genuinely moved me to tears, and several occasions when I would just stare at my kindle in absolute disbelieve because of something utterly, incredibly Evil Sophie had done.

Despite the very questionable moral of his world, Chainani has created two wonderful, complex main characters, who have successfully captured my heart (even though they could definitely do without handsome Son-of-King-Arthur Love Interest Tedros). Sophie and Agatha, in combination with Chainani’s wonderfully detailed and outright absorbing style, great sense of humor and all the wonderful little re-interpretations of fairy tale elements (apart from the blatant and unlucky failure to make his world a little less black-and-white), have convinced me enough of this story that I will pick up the next installment in any case.

However, I can’t in good consciousness give this story more than three stars. The first star gets detracted because of the unsatisfactory ending and the painful clichés, and the second… Well… I’ve got a pretty strict policy with books that make fun of fat girls. So, sorry, but even though I genuinely enjoyed this book, those things have bothered me too much for a four star rating.
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