I have a feeling ‘Wicked’ is going to be the basis of comparison for a lot of fairytale-inspired books I’ll review in the future. In The School for Good and Evil, the inspiration isn’t so direct, but it’s traceable.
We have two heroines, teenage girls from a village where, every four years, children fall under the threat of being snatched away to a school where they’ll learn to become heroes or villains in fairy tales. Sophie is our blonde, pink-loving aspiring princess (despite not actually being royalty) who dreams of being chosen for the School for Good, meeting her prince and having a happily Ever After. As a means to secure how ‘good’ she is in the eyes of the mysterious Schoolmaster, she has befriended graveyard-dwelling, drab Agatha, whose favorite hobby is lighting and flicking matches wherever she goes.
Despite their opposing personalities (and how obviously Sophie reached out to Agatha for dubious reasons), the girls see each other as friends. Indeed, they're the only real friends they either have. Understandably, the night of the Schoolmaster’s visit results in both girls being taken to the school, albeit with Agatha trying to save them from such a fate. What neither anticipates is that Agatha is dropped in the pretty, pristine halls of the School for Good while Sophie plops into the repugnant castle of the School for Evil.
