by Soman ChainaniGenre: Fantasy
Age group: 11/12+
In Sophie and Agatha's town, every year, two children are kidnapped. Well, not so much kidnapped as just taken—for they are not taken to be ransomed, but taken to be trained at the School for Good and the School for Evil. And after every year, new fairy tales show up with those two children as the hero and the villain. This year, it's Sophie and Agatha's turn. Sophie loves pink and spends hours each day on beauty treatments and makeup. She's sure she's going to the School for Good, to be turned into a perfect princess. Agatha dresses in black, misshapen dresses, and lives in a graveyard with her cat, Reaper. It's likely that she's heading for the School for Evil, where students learn Uglification and Special (Evil) Talents. But when the day actually comes, and Sophie and Agatha are finally taken, Sophie's dropped in the School of Evil and Agatha at the School of Good... Surely there's been some mistake! ...But the School Master doesn't make mistakes. If they really are in the wrong schools, is there some way to put things right? Or could Sophie and Agatha actually be in the places they're meant for?
Though this book might have some cliches and whatnot, it's so excellent that stuff doesn't really matter. I started it one morning, and I literally could not think about anything else for the whole day. I found myself picking this book up and reading another chapter—or two, or three, or the whole rest of the book—whenever I had the chance. It was that good. I liked how the characters interacted with each other: It was so real! Soman Chainani really understands how people work, and he uses many of these types of relationships between two people in this book. I also really enjoyed seeing how the characters changed over the course of the book. This is a kind of story where the characters' changes are a huge part of the plot. I can't say too much about the changes, for fear of spoiling the book, though. However, I will say that Sophie and Agatha's friendship is a very important part of the book, and that changes a LOT. I loved this book a lot, and I highly recommend it to everyone. Not everything is what it seems in this book—in fact, many of the characters are clueless to or are hiding things from themselves—and all of this secrecy wrapped in a magnificent display of storytelling makes for an extremely exciting read.
