The School for Good and Evil - Soman Chainani

"The first kidnappings happened two hundred years before. Some years it was two boys taken, some years two girls, sometimes one of each. But if at first the choices seemed random, soon the pattern became clear. One was always beautiful and good, the child every parent wanted as their own. The other was homely and odd, an outcast from birth. An opposing pair, plucked from youth and spirited away.

This year, best friends Sophie and Agatha are about to discover where all the lost children go: the fabled School for Good & Evil, where ordinary boys and girls are trained to be fairy tale heroes and villains. As the most beautiful girl in Gavaldon, Sophie has dreamed of being kidnapped into an enchanted world her whole life. With her pink dresses, glass slippers, and devotion to good deeds, she knows she’ll earn top marks at the School for Good and graduate a storybook princess. Meanwhile Agatha, with her shapeless black frocks, wicked pet cat, and dislike of nearly everyone, seems a natural fit for the School for Evil."

This book is a middle grade "alternative" fairy tale which parodies and utilizes fairy tale tropes to excellent effect, and I constantly sniggered with laughter at its tongue-in-cheek hilarity.

It is a light book, a Harry Potter-style boarding school novel based around fairy tales. It was just adorable at points, let me tell you, but it is not too sweet at all. For a book aimed at primary school children, this story had a surprising amount of darkness and depth.

What makes someone good? what makes someone evil? - which is why I saw a lot of promise with Chainani’s premise, with the beautiful but vain Sophie ending up in the School for Evil while the ugly and loathed Agatha's in the School for Good. Made me wonder, why is Sophie evil? Her vanity? Is everyone wrong about Agatha because, besides Sophie, they don’t really know her? For a while actually, Chainani did seem to be going in that direction, with self professed goodie Sophie confronted with situations that brought out the evil inside her, and Agatha doubting whether she truly is a witch as everyone says. As an exploration of good and evil, not the subtlest thing ever, but for a younger audience, pretty good.

Unfortunately, it seems to me like Chainani really didn’t know where he was going after those initial few chapters, because even before the story of good and evil totally falls off a cliff, The School for Good and Evil is just horribly inconsistent. Sophie is, one moment, an incompetent villain, and the next, the most powerful and feared witch in both schools. Agatha spends most of the book holding Sophie’s hand as Sophie struggles as a villain, then all of a sudden discovers her inner princess and now can’t go toe to toe with Sophie even though she’s been better with magic through the entire book. Sophie’s fellow witches Hester and Anadil are one moment Sophie’s evil tormenters, the next her evil co-conspirators, and finally on Team Good. Things about the School Master and his mysterious agenda are revealed, but then they don’t go anywhere. There’s some talk of why Good succeeds in fairy tales while Evil doesn’t, but that doesn’t go anywhere either. After reading through all these twists and turns trying to figure out the point of the reveals, I’m sorry, but the plot just didn’t make any sense, none of the characters behaved with any rhyme or reason, and if there’s supposed to be a coherent message about good and evil, it’s completely lost to me.

However the mangled tropes did go a way to save this book. We have hideously warty creatures, we have snouty, socially awkward, innately evil villains in the School of Evil. We have gloriously charming and handsome boys and girls in the School of Good (who are just so full of themselves). I actually started to feel sorry for the villains when it was revealed they could never love.
 
Age rating 10+. Nothing to put of children but a few guard wolves and the disgustingness of the school of Evil.