#Review of A World Without Princes by @SomanChainani #Published @HarperChildrens #Giveaway @NightOwlReviews ~ Crossroad Reviews

In the epic sequel to the New York Times bestselling novel, The School for Good and Evil, Sophie and Agatha are home, living out their Ever After. But life isn’t quite the fairy tale they expected.

When Agatha secretly wishes she’d chosen a different happy ending, she reopens the gates to the School for Good and Evil. But the world she and Sophie once knew has changed.

Witches and princesses, warlocks and princes are no longer enemies. New bonds are forming; old bonds are being shattered. But underneath this uneasy arrangement, a war is brewing and a dangerous enemy rises. As Agatha and Sophie battle to restore peace, an unexpected threat could destroy everything, and everyone, they love—and this time, it comes from within.

About the Author

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Soman Chainani's first novel, THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL, debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List, has been on ABA's National Indie Bestseller List for 12 weeks, has been translated into languages across six continents, and will soon be a major motion picture from Universal Studios.

The sequel, A WORLD WITHOUT PRINCES, debuted on the New York Times Bestseller List as well.

As a writer and film director, Soman's films have played at over 150 film festivals around the world, winning more than 30 jury and audience prizes, and his writing awards include honors from Big Bear Lake, New Draft, the CAPE Foundation, the Sun Valley Writer’s Fellowship, and the coveted Shasha Grant, awarded by a jury of international film executives.

When he’s not telling stories or teaching in New York City, Soman is a die-hard tennis player who never lost a first-round match for ten years . . . until he started writing THE SCHOOL FOR GOOD AND EVIL. Now he loses all the time.

This is the second book of The School for Good and Evil. It picks up a few months after the ending of book one and it was AMAZING! I really want book three now!

The setting is just as good as it was in book one. We are wished back in to the world of Good vs. Evil. With new twists, turns, and new characters, As well as saying hello to ones we already know. I really love how the author creates these great situations that test the boundaries of true love and friendship. I think that Sophie really is trying to be good, but she needs to look at what she is doing in a larger world view. Because, a lot of times she thinks she is doing good to save her friend and all she is really doing is saving her own skin. Agatha is learning that sometimes a friend is not all you need. Its ok when you are little. But, as you grow up you really need more. I thought that maybe they were going to turn Sophie into a boy and end the story that way. But, wow was I surprised at the turn of events. The author did an amazing job creating a mystery that you really just didn't know what was going on. You find that you were thinking one thing to only find out that the truth was out of left field of wonderful and amazing.

This book will not disappoint true fans of this series. I thought it was face paced and yummy! And it still amazes me that a guy wrote this book about two little girls growing up in a world where Fairy Tales are real and Good vs. Evil might be the least of their issues.

See my review for book one here

"All opinions are 100% honest and my own."

Behind the Scenes of The School for Good and Evil with Soman Chainani:

What inspired you to write The School for Good and Evil?

We didn’t have cable when I was young, so all we had was our rickety TV set and VHS tapes of every single Disney animated movie. Until age eight or so, that was all I pretty much watched. Everything I learned about storytelling, I learned from Disney. When I went to college, though, I became fascinated by the gap between the original tales and these Disney revisions. As a relentless student of the Grimms’ stories, what I loved about them was how unsafe the characters were. You could very well end up with wedding bells and an Ever After—or you could lose your tongue or be baked into a pie. There was no “warmth” built into the narrator, no expectations of a happy ending. The thrill came from vicariously trying to survive the gingerbread house, the hook-handed captain, or the apple-carrying crone at the door—and relief upon survival. Somewhere in that gap between the Disney stories and the retellings, The School for Good and Evil was born. In recent years, fairy-tale mash-ups, retellings, and revisions have become popular—and for good reason, given how enduring and inspiring the source material is. That said, I had my sights set on something more primal: a new fairy tale, just as unleashed and unhinged as the old, that found the anxieties of today’s children. To acknowledge the past—the alumni of the genre, so to speak—and move on to a new class. As soon as I started thinking in those terms, I knew I wanted to do a school-based novel. I was walking in Regents Park in London before a meeting when I had the first image . . . a girl in pink and a girl in black falling into the wrong schools. . . . I got so caught up thinking that I missed my appointment entirely.

Which school do you think you would belong to? Why?

I can be comically high maintenance (my friends joke that Sophie is the real me), so I’d surely be an overachieving Ever and the most regular user of the Groom Room (the medieval spa, which only the top-ranked students are allowed to use). That said, Evil’s classes have no boundaries—for sheer entertainment value alone, I can see the allure. That’s if I had a choice. In the process of writing the book, I realized I wasn’t quite sure which school I would actually end up in—so I created an online assessment to answer that question. I wrote all the questions myself and there’s a bank of over 100, so the questions change every time. I’ve taken it a number of times, trying to be as honest as I can, and I always end up 75% Evil and 25% Good. Those who read the novel will agree that this isn’t a surprising result in the least.

Which class would you most like to take?

Henchmen Training, for sure. I just think the challenge of trying to wrangle these rabid, nasty creatures who hate the idea of being subservient henchmen sounds like a recipe for complete disaster and drama . . . two things I adore.