You wouldn´t believe it, but this beautiful cover is the nicest part of this book. Its content is brutal and cruel, about love, war, and that not always a happy ending means that everyone is happy or that everything is all sunshine and butterflies. You don´t believe me? Read this book, and you know what I am talking about. Maybe I am grown out of this kind of book or this series in general, I don´t know. All I know is that I didn´t enjoy it as much as I enjoyed the first book. Good, after the ending of book two I hoped that it would go back to the old charm and wit and that there would be again all those kinds of scenes, the author showed with such great humor and irony in the first book. Well, think again.
The Last Ever After*
by Soman ChainaniThe School For Good And Evil #3
Publisher Harper Collins on July 21, 2015
Genre Children 12+
Pages 672
Format Hardcover
Source Publisher*
✶✶✶
Former best friends Sophie and Agatha thought their ending was sealed when they went their separate ways, but their story book is about to be rewritten – and this time theirs isn´t the only one. With the girls apart, Evil has taken over and the forces of Good are in deathly peril. Will Agatha and Sophie be able to work together to save them? Will they find their way to being friends again? And will their new ending be the last Ever After they´ve been searching for?
Story
Agatha can´t believe it, but since she and Tedros are back home at Gavaldon, her world is upside down. They have to hide in her mother´s place and Tedros becomes day by day more obnoxious and complains about everything. Is this the prince she fell in love with? No, for sure not! And her happy ending isn´t at all the way she´d expected it to be. But when she and Tedros are back in the forest, Agatha has to learn that things got worse here as well.
Style
I missed the humor, the great scenes where the author had burned a firework of irony, fantastic ideas, and a brilliant Agatha who fought with Sophie over the prince of her dreams. This third book contains not even a quarter of all that. Yes, there is some humor and wit dialogues to find in here, but mostly towards the end of the novel. The language is soft, the action bloody, cruel and very dark. Forget that Cinderella was a lovely beauty with great charm. This one here is an old hag who has nothing else on her mind but to eat everything she can get into her dirty and greedy fingers. And this is only the beginning of it.
Yes, all those old fairy tale figures are nothing but empoisoned characters who´ve seen far better days and who aren´t really willing to help Agatha and Tedros to bring back the balance between Good and Evil. Oh no.
Characters
Did I mention that Tedros is far from being the prince of your dreams? If you´re looking for a strong and brave prince who´s willing to fight and defend his princes, love, and dreams, then think again. Tedros is a week coward, an idiot who rather eats everything he can get a grip on instead of training or trying to get to know Agatha better. And don´t put him into a tiny room with no chance to step outside.
And Sophie? She is as envy and bad as ever. One moment she wants to do everything to get her best friend Agatha back, the next she uses her knife and thinks of something to get Tedros back into her life. What a friend.
Conclusion
This was indeed a long read for me. Many pages had to be turned, even more, words to be read. In the end, I was disappointed and am not sure if I will read the fourth book as well. Oh yes, there is another one. Hard to believe, but the truth …
Happy reading
*I read the German edition new release by Ravensburger on February 14, 2017
Soman Chainani
Soman Chainani´s first novel, The School for Good and Evil, debuted on the New York Times bestseller list, as did each of its two sequels, A World Without Princes and The Last Ever After. The series has been translated into over twenty languages across six continents and will soon be a major motion picture from Universal Pictures. As a graduate of Harvard University and Columbia University´s MFA Film Program, Soman has made films that have played at over 150 festivals around the world, and his writing awards include the Sun Valley Writer´s Fellowship. 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.
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