The School for Good and Evil: The Last Ever After by Soman Chainani

Have you ever noticed that books in a series get longer as the series progresses? It's like editors get leery of criticizing an author's work, but I'm generally of the opinion that a good editor is worth their weight in gold. Creative types sometimes have a hard time seeing their work objectively and that's where a good editor comes in. It's their job to suggest where necessary cuts should be made and where scenes need more substance to aide the flow of narrative. Just think what an amazing book Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix could have been if it had been 200 pages shorter and minus the puberty morass.

Anyway, I guess it's clear I think this the third tome in the series suffers from being too long. The Last Ever After weighs in at a whopping 655 pages and I'm generally of the opinion that that's too long for something billing itself as a YA novel. (I'm sure there are exceptions, but I can't come up with any.)

It would be one thing if the pacing was such that I didn't notice the length. That does happen sometimes, but there were several times during my read where I ended a session with a huge sigh and started flipping around to gauge the length of the section/chapter.

That all sounds pretty negative. Aside from its length and related pacing issues, this is a decent book.  At the end of the second book, Agatha has her kiss and chooses Tedros. Sophie has her kiss and chooses the evil school master. The Last Ever After picks up only a few weeks later with Agatha and Tedros trapped in the reader world and having severe relationship issues. In the meantime Sophie is in the school master's tower with a rejuvenated school master deeply questioning the wisdom of her choice.

Of course, the only choice is to reopen "The Story of Agatha and Sophie" yet again but with even higher stakes. I'm trying not to roll my eyes here, but yeah... heavy sarcasm on the word 'again'.

Right, so I think part of my frustration with the length is that the ending was telegraphed from the first book in the series. There were some nice moments along the way and some of the side characters really got developed and fleshed out in this third volume...but it's still quite the undertaking to read.