100 books like The School for Good and Evil

Kimberly Shannon Murphy’s story of unspeakable abuse by a trusted family member is as heartbreaking and harrowing as it is a testament to the importance of truth-telling. If only others had been as brave as Kimberly and spoken up, her abuse wouldn’t have happened.

I loved this story because no matter how hard life was, little Kimberly felt a “glimmer” deep in her soul—magic that promised she would live happily ever after. It’s a raw retelling, but I reminded myself that she lived it, so I owe it to her to read it.

She excavated these memories, bringing them out of the dark and into the bright spotlight where she now stands as an award-winning stuntwoman who defeats monsters on the big screen! 

Full disclosure: I’m a sucker for retellings, as you may have noticed since this book is the second retelling to make my list.

This book retells the 12 Dancing Princesses, exploring the family’s curse more in-depth. That means it’s filled with gothic settings, plenty of tragedy, and the requisite family secrets. It’s the perfect spooky story to keep you up all night (because you won’t be able to put it down).

This is a fairy tale. I’ll state this upfront because at first glance, it’s a bit of a hard read. And why is it a hard read? Because—to me, anyway—it feels like wish-fulfillment fantasy on steroids. It’s like the rantings of a terribly abused boy. Of course, much fiction—especially fairytales which is this book’s genre—is wish fulfillment. But the story feels very uncomfortable. Mio is so over-the-top happy about having been transported into the kingdom of his father the king that one feels as if one is listening to a pitiful delusion.  I found myself reading the book with two minds. One mind kept saying, “Dive into the reverie and joy of a boy who has found his dead father in a faraway land and who discovers that he’s important to the world.” And simultaneously, my other mind was thinking, “Oh my heavens! This little boy… show more.

I love, love, love this book, for so many reasons. My top two are: 1) It sits squarely in that odd ‘fantasy in a technological world’ niche (Imagine 1984’s world filled with fairies!) 2) It has an odd, dark humour feel to a book that I like (think Gaiman or Pratchett) And oh! The characters? Funny, clever, nuanced. Bum that was three wasn’t it? I’ll come in again.

This book is so sweet, and I loved the epistolary format! My husband and I wrote each other many letters (yes, by hand) and emails while we were dating, so reading all the exchanges between Izzy and Brodie brought me back to those first fluttery feelings of falling in love. Izzy is such a sweet heroine, and Brodie really saw her, which I also loved!

The Merry Spinster falls into my big bucket of fairytale retelling faves, but it hardly sticks to tradition: rather than simply following old plots, Lavery draws on the tone and style of classic fairy tales to create a gender-warped world where daughters use he/him pronouns and mermaids are sort of, but distinctly not, girls. Even better, the playful attitude towards gender now seems to foreshadow Lavery’s own coming out and transition, both occurring after he published this book—something that fills me with a special kind of trans-author love. Reading this for the first time, I had the sensation of slipping pleasantly into an utter dreamworld of gender/sexuality beauty, like a warm bath: I recommend you fall in, too.

Lewis considered George MacDonald his spiritual father, having never met the man. He said that MacDonald introduced him to the gospel through his stories before he even knew that that’s what was happening. How? Metaphor. George MacDonald knew of God’s love more than most and did his best to share it with the world, deeply hidden in fairy tales, the kind of folklore that Lewis, Tolkien, and the rest of the Inklings loved so dearly.

In the words of the writer herself, "this is an adult fairy tale about rivers, time, and the mystery of love." I have never read anything like this little gem of a book that immerses you in the natural world to such an extent, I felt like I became half-aquatic during the reading of it. It made me want to run away and live in the Tasmanian wilderness by a river, but then again, I’m not half woman, half fish, like the protagonist of the book. A strange and wonderful read.

Madame D'Aulnoy is one of the key figures in my novel, and her own strange and beautiful fairytales deserve to be much better known. Many are proto-'Beauty and the Beast' narratives where enchantments turn men into rams or serpents, whilst in 'The White Cat' it is a woman who is the animal. In this sumptuous, giftable book, acclaimed artist Natalie Frank's surreal and feminist images bring an extra, adult dimension to these tales. 

These stories run deep in my blood! I remember my Mum reading "Cinderella," "Hansel and Gretel," "Rapunzel," and "Snow White," to name a few, and being totally enthralled, captivated, and scared all at once.

Reading this edition as an adult evokes the same feelings, but I also experienced a sense of wonder and intrigue as I read the lesser-known stories such as "The Boy Who Left Home to Find Out About the Shivers," "The Girl with No Hands," "The Nixie of the Millpond," and "Hans-my-Hedgehog." 

I loved discovering these stories, closer to the originally published ones in their first collection, Children's and Household Tales in 1812, as they are much darker and scarier in nature than modern versions, and reading what Philip Pullman says about each one is an unexpected delight!