The School for Good and Evil, by Soman Chainani

There are a number of reasons to be wary of my thoughts on this one...I usually read fantasy because I make myself do it - it isn't a genre I prefer but I know it's important to be a well-rounded reading pug, and I have read a few that I loved! This series has been around a for a few years, and I've always thought about reading it, but since it's an OBOB title this coming season, I thought it would be a good time to give it a go. So, not my favorite genre, reading it because it has been selected for OBOB, and it isn't terribly new and I haven't read it yet...all that said, I wish I could say I loved this, but...I didn't. A really clever idea behind the retelling of the fairy tale, and I believe it is still better written that Chris Colfer's Land of Stories books. I wanted to like it a lot, but it really jumped around way too much for me, and too many of the solutions to things seemed to be too easily created by Chainani just to move the story forward. Maybe I need to read it again - maybe I missed some things, some clever twists that went over my pug head? It's possible, as I watch other reviews of this book and series and they are usually pretty strongly in favor. I just didn't love love it. I liked it, I read the whole thing (over 400 pages) to see what happened in the end...but I don't think I'll read book two, nor am I likely to re-read this one to see if it was just me, or if the story was just okay.

Basically (and I mean very basically), this book takes Good and Evil and turns them on their heads!  I know it's popular (although not the most popular fantasy series in the library, by far), and it's probably better than I thought. If you read it, will you let me know what you thought, and if it blew you away, will you check in here and tell me how it did that for you? Until then, on to the next great reading adventure! 3 paws.