Girls with Girls

Boys with Boys

Back to your castle

Before you’re destroyed

Even though Sophie and Agatha had triumphantly returned to their village and broke the curse of the School Master, they have not reached their happily ever afters. Or at least they did, but their roads to happiness have changed.

Sophie says she’s happy in Galvedon, but she can’t stand her father getting remarried to Honora complete with the stepsons he always wanted nor the slowly fading limelight as the village moves on and pigeons poop on her statue. But she thinks as long as she has Agatha, she’ll be okay, she won’t be a witch again.

Meanwhile, Agatha thinks she can get back to her old self, reluctant to admit that she has been changed by her time in the School of Good. No longer is Sophie’s company enough, not when she dreams of a certain blue-eyed, golden hair prince.

So in their most lonely moment, they make a new wish and everything goes to hell when mysterious Red-Hooded figures come to the village to kill Sophie. In a frantic flight from Galvedon that hints at a darker underbelly to the Elder’s leadership, Sophie and Agatha escape to the Endless Forest to find the schools have changed. Good and Evil have broken apart into a war of the sexes and just as before, the girls’ time there threatens to change them, their relationship and their world irrevocably.

Chainani flips the script here as Sophie becomes desperate to do anything to get back home and avoid any actions that would trigger her evil witch nature while Agatha stalls because she has to see Tedros one more time.

I mentioned before that I found Tedros to be unlikable and can’t see why Agatha would care for him, but Chainani does an excellent job fleshing him out by showing how scarred he is by his parent’s tragic romance and his narrow-minded view of how fairytales are supposed to go that he’s blinded to reality and incapable of listening. Tedros gets a hard-blow in this book as almost everyone turns against him which surprisingly did make me warm up to him but it was Agatha’s admission that she fell for him because she saw how he wanted to be protected as he protects everyone else that got to me. I’m a sucker for that kind of character.

As I mentioned above, Agatha is struggling with her identity as she hates to be a girl who cares about a boy above her friend, especially one who is so hot-headed, arrogant and selfish as Tedros but she also secretly fears Sophie after seeing her go full-out witch. There’s always a part of her that wonders if Sophie will try to kill her again because she never fully forgave her.

And the tragedy is that Sophie does care for Agatha now and she doesn’t want to be evil, but her true nature gets the better of her. She’s trying but her actions always veer towards selfishness. Just as with Tedros, Chainani fleshes out Sophie’s backstory and her feelings regarding her mother who was also in a love triangle between Honora for her husband that led to the dissolution of the two’s friendship in an eerie parallel to Agatha-Sophie-Tedros that makes the drama even more exciting.

Now I’m talking mainly about the characters because the plot is a bit complex and again spoiler-free, but I will say that Chainani retains his sigature humr and grim magic in depicting the two new schools playing on the toxicity of man-hating feminism and the cruel, feeling-repressed masculinity while highlighting that both sexes have their virtues that would be good to emulate instead of the rigid boxes of proper boy/girl behavior.

There’s also plenty of lore to dive into at the School of Girl where Dean Dovey has been replaced by Evelyn Sader whose girl-empowerment facade hides a manipulative heart with Big-Brother-esque butterflies stalking everyone’s words that make her more scary than any wolf from the Doom Room. She has a plan and a connection to the School’s past that keeps up the suspense as Agatha tries to unravel her true motives.

On the boy side, Aeric is a bloodthirsty brute that represents the worst of the boy’s nature who I also suspect of sinster intentions but I suppose I will found out next book.

Other characters and new ones make their return, showing the changes at the school and the hilarious disgust/excitment between those who want to return to the old ways and the new.

Honestly, there’s so much more to talk about because Chainani packs this book to the brim and it’s one wild ride further driving a wedge in the intense codependency that blurs the line between love and friendship and explores what happens after the supposed happily ever after.