Reviews with content warning for Toxic friendship - The School for Good and Evil

A re read from childhood and this book is still entertaining although it doesn’t stand up to the level I remembered. Lots of fat phobia, toxic relationships and friendships as well which I don’t remember being so outright. Overall an ok book and enjoyable to read.

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lct's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

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cozywithraven's review against another edition

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adventurous dark slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

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ailsaod's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional hopeful slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.0

I read this book because I saw some clips of the show and thought it looked interesting. I thought there was opportunity for some interesting trope subversions but this book is trying too hard to subversive and ends up contradicting its own message.

At the beginning I was quite excited because I thought Sophie and Agatha were an interesting contrast with internal vs external goodness. Agatha is the village weird kid but is very kind but rather asocial while Sophie is externally very pretty and tries to be nice but is such a mean girl that it is actually quite nasty. There is a random comment saying that Agatha dressed up as a bride for Halloween once because marriage scares her and I thought that was the best (and funniest) thing! This exciting beginning is over rather quickly though as we then head to the school and the book begins to get tangled up in its own themes.

I think the author was going for the angle that there is more to being a good person than being a knight if you are a boy or a damsel in distress if you are a girl and that the gender roles that we see played out in so many fairy tales are restrictive but this didn't really come through. The story points out these things but never quite gets to the point of saying what it will do instead so I'm left with the final impression that the 'moral of the story' is that everyone sucks but that's ok if you are beautiful and can't wait to get married to the first boy to acknowledge your existence like a good little air-headed princess. In fact if you aren't frothing at the mouth at the thought of dating boys and being vapid then you must be evil! Yea no thank you. We even head into the territory of external appearance being determined by your morality in the climax of the book which I guess is in fitting with the fairy tale setting but not a great mindset to have nowadays when this logic says that everyone who isn't conventionally attractive and living a heteronormative lifestyle is a bad person.

On another note the "friendship" between Agatha and Sophie was extremely tedious. They have the communication skills of characters in a shoujo romance anime and are stuck in a continuous cycle of falling out, almost making up and then falling out over something different. I honestly don't understand why Agatha is always willing to go so far out of her way for Sophie when Sophie will never even thank her and always blames her for EVERYTHING. Who needs enemies when you can have friends like this!?

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kaziaroo's review

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adventurous dark funny medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

I picked this up because I enjoyed the film, although I didn't realise it was based on a children's book. It did contain some very undisguised dark themes though, so if it wasn't for the age of the characters, the writing style and some of the humour, I'd be tempted to call it YA.

It's a shame to see that children's stories still rely on fatphobia and making fun of "ugly" people for humour, and there was a lot of stereotyping of what "good" and "evil" people look like – although a lot of this is critiqued by the narrative, there were some blurred lines: for example, while we are shown that being mean to Dot about her fatness is bad, the author also mentions her size nearly every time she appears, and her size and appetite makes up most of her characterisation. Thankfully, there wasn't a hooked nose in sight, unlike in the film.

While the plot dragged a bit in places, I really enjoyed the characters in this book and loved the portrayal of a character's descent into madness and the protagonists' respective identity crises. It was a really fun, if dark, read.

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bookiesncookies's review

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adventurous dark inspiring mysterious fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Listen, if you had told me a year ago that my favorite series of the year, the ones I can't put down, the ones I binge through, are ones about small cursed children who have magic in them that they don't know about, that go to magical schools, ugh *chef's kiss.*

All the Evergirls trying to plan their ballgowns ahead of time, plus contingency gowns
Agatha accidentally eating a fairy upon arrival
Tricking their reflections to pass the bridge
The deep mystery of the reader mural, the proof of the balance of good/evil, the School Master's riddle, and so many other threads that start to be woven in book 2, and hopefully book 3
Agatha reading more of her Good textbooks and falling in love with that world
Locking Dot out of the coven
Sophie trying to prettify her uniforms

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kllyholt's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.25

I found this book to be funny & interesting in the way it’s addressing fairytale such as beauty = good and ugly = evil. Unfortunately I cannot tell if the author is attempting to actually subvert those tropes and is doing a poor job at it, or genuinely agrees with them, because in the end

Agatha becomes beautiful to look at and Sophie turns into a hideous witch, even though prior to that everyone was surprised that beautiful Sophie could be evil and plain Agatha could be good- which was much better in my opinion.

I’m assuming it’s more towards the latter, which is incredibly disappointing to see. The story itself is still rather entertaining and I’m interested to see where it goes so I will probably finish out the series, but I hope the way these tropes are addressed changes.

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