The School For Good And Evil

Hi guys! It has been a long time but I am back to review the novel “The School For Good And Evil” by Soman Chainani. It is book #1 in the “The School For Good And Evil” series. It is about 2 girls, Agatha and Sophie, different in appearance and personality, who are taken to the School For Good and Evil. Sophie wants to go to the school for a chance to be a princess and Agatha has other ideas instead. During the book, they go on a rollercoaster of an adventure.

Warning: SPOILERS UP AHEAD! (IF YOU’VE READ IT, GREAT! BUT IF NOT THEN DON’T SCROLL UP OR IF YOU JUST WANT TO SPOIL IT FOR YOURSELF THEN GO AHEAD)

My book review:

Book itself:

• The cover 📕 looked really interesting and I like how it subverts the trope right away e.g. Agatha near The School 🏫 For Good and Sophie near The School 🏫 For Evil and it won’t be how you imagine it.

Characters:

• Right away, I can see how different the 2 girls 👭 are. Sophie has her head in the clouds ☁️, she’s blonde, she’s beautiful ✨, and she wants a fairytale, specifically her fairytale, her Prince Charming. Agatha, on the other hand, is blunter, a brunette, resourceful and just wants a friend i.e. Sophie.
• It’s so upsetting that Agatha can’t see herself as beautiful ✨.
• I really like how the story delves deep into Sophie’s mentality and she thinks that what a princess should care about is appearance, being with a prince, and fashion 👗. Mostly superficial features.
• Whereas Agatha cares more about friendship, compassion, loyalty, and more of the stuff within a person like their personality, values, and morals and she embodies those traits strongly throughout the novel.
• It was quite interesting to read Tedros’s mindset, we can see there is so much pressure on him to succeed and he wants his father to be proud of him and end up not like him. I would like to see more about that as an emotional arc for him throughout the series.
• Beatrix is interesting, to say the least. She goes out of her way to insult Sophie and ridicule Agatha and when there’s an opportunity for her to redeem herself she doesn’t take it. For example, near the end, when they’re fighting each other, there is a chance for her to stand up and do what’s right but instead, she hides and runs away. I kinda want her to have a redemption arc throughout the series but I don’t know if that’s gonna happen. I feel like she has the potential.
• Dot is adorable. I love that she continues to eat chocolate 🍫 at any given time. I would do the same.

Plot:

• I like how they turned around the fairytale trope: Agatha whose stereotyped as a witch becomes a princess 👸 and Sophie who always wanted to be a princess 👸 becomes a witch.
• I love the moment when everyone is in the Theater 🎭 of Tales and they’ve all done their talents and Tedros has just done his and Sophie isn’t there for hers. It looks like the crown 👑 is immediately his and Agatha is just admiring him and it all comes crashing down when there’s a sudden knock at the door 🚪…It gave me the chills 🥶.
• I really like how Agatha gave Sophie the kiss 💋 of life…it was so intimate.

Moments:

• I didn’t like that Hester and Anadil excluded Dot out since they were friends before Sophie came along and she was exiled from her room.
• Dot is such an underrated character.
• Hort is just Hort. He’s quite funny too.
• Adding on, it was interesting to see that Agatha made it a habit to avoid every mirror 🪞 at the school, but it’s immediately heartbreaking when you find out why – it’s because she’s been conditioned by everyone to think she’s ugly. She’s going to stay like that forever. Also when Professor Dovey tries to make her look into the mirror, to confront her fear, and she breaks it, it makes me so sad that this fear of being ugly still sticks to her and it’s hard for her to confront it.
• As for Sophie, it was intriguing to see that she is so fervent to be a princess and have her fairytale because her family life is devastating as she is isolated by herself – her father is with another woman since her mother died, and her brothers don’t seem to care or acknowledge her at the beginning of the book. Also, her father doesn’t care as much for her as opposed to her brothers.
• It was nice that Kiko and Agatha became friends during her time at The School 🏫 For Good. She was one of the less judgy girls.
• I gotta admit, Hester has a really cool power.

Overall this was an interesting book and I’m really excited to read the rest!

Comment down below which part of the book was your favourite!

Also, comment below any parts, characters and plotlines I missed!