Seen at Bookish Antics! 
 Middle-grade novels are usually pretty hit or miss for me because I have such high expectations for them. Pennyroyal Academy is an adorable, imaginative fantasy that will totally warp your view of fairy tales forever and will put a smile on your face. This isn't your classic Grimm fairy-tale, there is no happily ever after and no one rides off into the sunset, but it's still oh so good. Even when this book borders on ridiculous, it still manages to be a ton of fun and extremely entertaining. 
 Imagine a school where princes and princesses train to fight off witches and dragons -- a place where princesses don't rely on princes to save them. Evie is the victim of a memory curse and is drawn to Pennyroyal Academy where she becomes a student. Something that Evie doesn't know is that her past is stranger than she could ever have imagined. If Evie can survive a year of Princess training exercise, she'll be sent off into a war against the witches and nothing will ever be the same. 
 In one of the opening chapters, one of the characters is asked why they want to be a Princess and they're kicked out of the Academy for saying it's because they're looking for Prince Charming. This simple plot point meant the world to me because it totally subverts the misogynistic nature of fairy tales and it sets such a gender positive role model for readers. Little girls shouldn't be taught that they need a Prince to save them, they should know that they can be the heroes of their own stories and Pennyroyal really exemplifies that. 
 To prepare for an eventual war against the witches, the characters undergo training to weed out the weak and incapable. I really enjoyed reading about the diverse set of activities one needed to be a proper Princess, but it soon became apparent to me that they were way too many trials. Some of the trials were bland and blended into each other in my mind, making the plot slower and a bit tedious to get through at times. 
 I'm aware that M.A. Larson is a television writer and this really translates into cinematic, clever plot twists in Pennyroyal Academy. I truly didn't see the twists in this book coming and they were perfectly thought-out, adding an extra layer of excitement to the plot. The plot was complemented by atmospheric world-building that immersed the reader in a world of danger and beauty, unlike anything I've ever read before. It's clear that Larson's isn't just a fine television scribe, but also an excellent novelist. I've heard that Pennyroyal Academy is in development to be a movie with Reese Witherspoon and I totally believe that Larson should pen the script. 
 Pennyroyal Academy is an excellent middle-grade novel that will appeals to fans of The School For Good And Evil and The Land Of Stories. This is a novel that parents will love to read to their kids and kids won't want to read just one chapter! I'm quite excited to read more of Evie's adventures at Pennyroyal and I hope the sequel lives up to my high expectations.