The School For Good and Evil

The School for Good and Evil is the first in the six-book School for Good and Evil Series by Soman Chainani. Published in 2013, The School for Good and Evil follows Sophie and Agatha and their journey of friendship through the School for Good and Evil. It debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, has sold over three million copies worldwide, and has been translated into 30 languages. A film version of the book was released by Netflix in October 2022. In May 2022, Chainani published The Rise of the School for Good and Evil, the first book in a prequel series to The School for Good and Evil.

Chainani graduated with his bachelor’s degree from Harvard University and received his MFA in film from Columbia University. He was nominated for the Waterstone Prize for Children’s Literature and named to the Out100 list of the most influential LGBTQ+ people. He also received the $100,000 Shasha Grant from the Abu Dhabi Film Commission and the Sun Valley Writer’s Fellowship for debut writers.

Plot Summary

Sophie and Agatha are friends who live in the village of Gavaldon, but they could not be more different from each other. Sophie is beautiful, vain, loves pink, and is convinced that she will be kidnapped by the School Master and turned into a fairy-tale princess. Agatha loves black, frumpy dresses, lives in a cemetery with her evil cat, plays with matches, and doesn’t believe in fairy tales. Although they are an unlikely pair, each sees the other for who she is, and they have a close friendship. The School Master kidnaps both girls and takes them to the School for Good and Evil, where Sophie is dropped into the School for Evil, and Agatha is taken to the School for Good. Sophie insists she’s in the wrong school, but she is told there are no mistakes; she tries to escape. Agatha wants nothing to do with the School for Good and escapes as soon as possible to get Sophie and go home. Both girls are dragged back to their schools, where they meet in an assembly. Agatha tries to convince Sophie they need to go home, but Sophie spots King Arthur’s son Tedros and decides he is her destiny.

Agatha sneaks out of her room to find Sophie and go home, but Sophie doesn’t want to go. She switches uniforms with Agatha and tries to go to the School for Good, but their clothes magically switch back, and Agatha is put back in Good and Sophie in Evil. Sophie endures Evil classes like uglification while insisting she’s good. In Henchman class, the students must get a golden goose to lay an egg. Sophie wishes in her mind for Tedros. Instead of helping her, the goose turns from golden to gray; her professor is amazed that Sophie is so evil the goose would rather give up her powers than help her. He gives her a number-one ranking. Up in his tower, the School Master looks at Sophie’s ranking with glee. Meanwhile, Agatha turns wish fish back into a human in animal communication class because her soul is pure Good. She is chased by other animals that want to be human and destroy a whole wing of the Good castle as they chase her on the roof. As Agatha turns a gargoyle back into a little boy, Tedros kills it. Agatha yells at him, and Tedros is convinced she’s a witch.

In surviving fairy tales, the one class that Sophie and Agatha have together, they are turned into hobgoblins. Tedros must pick between them to determine the difference between Good and Evil. When Tedros is drawn to Agatha, Sophie attacks her. They fight each other and then Tedros. Sophie and Agatha suffer through burning shoes for an afternoon as punishment for fighting. Sophie decides she wants to go home, so they sneak up to the School Master’s tower, where they find the Storian, the magical pen that records fairy tales. The Storian starts writing their fairy tale, and the School Master tells them they can’t go home until it's finished. If they, a witch and a princess, are friends in the end, then they will go home. He gives them a riddle and sends them back to their schools.

Agatha and Sophie puzzle over the riddle before realizing the answer is true love. They plan for Tedros to fall in love with Sophie and give her true love’s kiss to prove she is Good. Sophie spurns Agatha’s help at first but ends up taking her advice to be herself. She holds lectures at lunch instructing Nevers on how to be beautiful and have good hygiene. Tedros is interested in her until he sees Sophie ranked lowest in the School for Evil. Agatha agrees to mogrify—magically transform—into a cockroach and attend classes with Sophie; she pretends to have the plague so she doesn’t have to go to her own classes. After a few weeks, Agatha helps Sophie become number one in the Evil School. Tedros falls for Sophie and arranges a meeting. Sophie and a disguised Agatha meet him, but Sophie postpones their kiss. Sophie betrays Agatha because she doesn’t need her now that she has a prince.

Tedros and Sophie’s love is tested when they are both selected for the Trial by Tale, where the top 20 Evers and Nevers are released into the Blue Forest and the last one standing wins. Tedros and Sophie plan to win together, but Sophie’s peers decide to kill her during the trial. After Sophie overhears a teachers’ meeting where they decide to let her compete despite the threats against her, she begs Agatha for help. Agatha agrees to help her in the trial. Sophie is sent into the trial first, and Tedros is sent in last. Tedros makes her promise that they will win together, proving their love is strong and she is Good. Agatha, as a mogrified dove, guides Sophie to safety and transforms her into a shrub. When the trial is almost over, Tedros limps into the glen where the girls are disguised. He calls for Sophie, who refuses to come out. Hester, Sophie’s roommate, attacks him, but Sophie refuses to help him despite Agatha’s promptings. After Hester appears to be vanquished, Agatha launches a sneak attack. Sophie covers her eyes while Agatha saves his life. Tedros realizes Sophie’s betrayal.

After the trial, Sophie pines for Tedros. She gives him a chance to honor his promise to take her to the Everball, and he refuses. Sophie retaliates by launching pranks on the Evers, but Tedros refuses to capitulate to her; he is now drawn to Agatha because of what she did for him. Agatha tries to apologize to Sophie, but Sophie spurns her. Agatha has a crisis due to not knowing who she is apart from Sophie. Professor Dovey, the Dean of the School for Good, helps Agatha accepts that she belongs in the School for Good and is beautiful because of her inside character. The night before the Circus of Talents, the talent competition between the Evers and Nevers, Agatha goes to stop Sophie’s prank. They end up in the moat, and the School Master throws them outside the School for Good’s gate. Tedros rescues Agatha from thorns and is angry when he finds Sophie, but Agatha convinces him to forgive her. He spots Sophie’s inner witch self and tells Sophie to stay away from him and Agatha. Sophie realizes that Agatha is her nemesis and must be destroyed.

Sophie doesn’t go to the Circus of Talents, and Good handily wins all the challenges. For Agatha’s talent, she reveals that the guards for the School for Good and Evil are failed students and challenges the School’s ideas about Good and Evil. Tedros names her the winner of the Circus, but the doors magically open and let Sophie in. She taunts Tedros into dueling her, but he kneels and asks Agatha to the ball. In response to Agatha’s agreement, Sophie scream-sings and summons ravens, who kill all the wolf and fairy guards except one. The School Master names her the winner of the Circus of Talents, and the Theater of Talents is expelled from the School of Good. The students are deposited in the stair room of the School for Good, where Sophie scream-sings again and shatters the glass staircases and floors. Tedros tries to save Agatha, but Sophie tricks him. She is about to kill him when Agatha tackles her. Sophie pushes Agatha off a cliff, but Agatha is saved by the lone fairy who survived Sophie’s attack.

Sophie disappears, and the School for Good braces for another attack. Sophie throws a ball for the Nevers instead. The Evers think Sophie is going to attack and march on the School for Evil first. Tedros locks Agatha in a room when she protests. Agatha escapes, and she gets to the School of Evil first, where Sophie begs her forgiveness and asks her to dance to prevent war. When the Evers’ army bursts in, they find Sophie and Agatha dancing. Sophie convinces Tedros that Agatha tricked him, so Tedros tries to kill her while his army launches an arrow attack on the Nevers. Sophie stops the arrows with magic.

Tedros realizes his mistake, but the damage is done. Because Good attacked Evil, Evil students become beautiful, and Good students become ugly. Sophie attacks the Ever army with giant rats, but Agatha, who knows good always wins, turns the tide. Sophie realizes that she must get to the Storian and write her own story to win. She floods the ballroom and dumps the two schools in the moat, where they continue to fight. Sophie climbs the School Master’s tower; he reveals that he is the Evil brother who killed his Good brother in the Great War so that evil would always win. In doing so, he upset the balance of Good and Evil; as a result, now Good always wins. He has been searching for pure Evil’s love to beat Good and invites Sophie to be his partner forever. Sophie gets a vision of the future with only hate and no happiness and pushes him away. Agatha pulls her out of the tower into the lake.

On the beach, the School Master tries to stab Agatha with the Storian, but Sophie jumps in front of her and sacrifices herself. The swans on the students’ uniforms coalesce into the Good brother’s spirit, and he destroys the School Master before disintegrating. Sophie dies in Agatha’s arms, but Agatha brings her back to life with true love’s kiss. They disappear and go home because they ended their fairy tale as friends. Tedros reaches for Agatha, but he’s too late.