Two friends are whisked to a legendary academy where heroes and villains are trained—and destiny isn’t as simple as fairy tales promise. Sharp, funny, and deliciously subversive, The School for Good and Evil turns classic stories inside out in a battle of wits, style, and heart.
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Start or resume Shelf TalkThese picks are popular with readers who enjoyed this book. Possible spoilers below.
In The School for Good and Evil, did you enjoy a perilous magic academy where lessons and tests can literally kill you?
If the Trials, the Woods creeping with danger, and the high-stakes classes at the twin schools kept you rapt in The School for Good and Evil, you’ll love how the Scholomance turns every homework assignment into a fight for survival. Like when Agatha and Sophie face lethal coursework and the Trial by Tale, here El is navigating a school that actively tries to eat its students—alliances, rivalries, and razor‑edged exams included.
In The School for Good and Evil, did you enjoy being whisked from an ordinary village into a rule-twisting, dangerous fairyland?
You enjoyed how Sophie and Agatha are plucked from Gavaldon and dropped into a world with capricious rules, fickle magic, and dark whimsy. In The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland…, September leaves Nebraska for Fairyland, where bargains are binding, names have power, and quests can reshape you—echoing the way Agatha and Sophie learn the hard costs of stories and ‘Ever vs. Never’ destinies.
In The School for Good and Evil, did you enjoy fairy‑tale and wizard‑school tropes cheekily upended with sharp, playful satire?
If you grinned at how Chainani skewers happily‑ever‑after rules—like the Evers vs. Nevers pageants, the Circus of Talents, and Tedros’s storybook chivalry—Pratchett’s Equal Rites will hit the same spot. It lampoons wizard academies and gendered destinies with wit as cutting as the School Master’s lessons, while still delivering heart and courage.
In The School for Good and Evil, did you enjoy a prickly, mismatched partnership that hardens into fierce loyalty amid mounting peril?
If the evolving, complicated bond between Agatha and Sophie—from reluctant allies to something deeper, sealed by that ‘true love’s kiss’ twist—hooked you, A Darker Shade of Magic offers a similar electricity. Kell and Lila start as wary partners, clash over motives, and end up risking everything for each other as the magic grows darker and the stakes explode.
In The School for Good and Evil, did you enjoy a morally gray heroine navigating glittering courts, ruthless politics, and dangerous magic?
If Sophie’s slide toward villainy, Agatha’s hard choices, and the twisty ethics around the School Master fascinated you, The Cruel Prince delivers that same allure of beautiful, terrible choices. Jude survives Faerie by embracing cunning and compromise—much like the way Good and Evil keeps blurring its lines—while every alliance hides a dagger.
