Jasmine Guillory’s sweet, charming new novel, By the Book, is a modern-day retelling of a beloved fairy tale that is sure to delight fans of the author – and make her some new ones. This novel is listed as the second in the Meant to Be series which are novels based on various fairy tales….
Big Bad Wolf is a deliciously sexy take on Little Red Riding Hood that held up pretty well for me. There’s a mansion overlooking the Maine woods and its owner, Wolf Trevelyan, is pretty much the local bogeyman. Rumor has it he killed his first wife on their wedding night, and he’s stayed safely away from Maine ever…
Narrated by Greg Boudreaux The Demon’s in the Details is a riff on Rumpelstiltskin that hits the basic beats of the original without being an exact reproduction of it, transforming the passive main character into a brave, fiercely protective individual who can look out for himself, the king – who is, let’s face it, a pretty nasty piece…
Once More Upon a Time is a completely captivating, charming and comedic fairy tale novella about what happens after you find what is supposed to be your happily ever after. Imelda is one of the twelve dancing princesses. Contrary to popular belief, she and her sisters had good cause to wear their slippers out every…
A Spindle Splintered, Alix E. Harrow’s wonderful retelling of Sleeping Beauty, stands the fairytale’s premise on its head while managing to hit the right familiar notes to evoke emotions in its readers. Zinnia Gray suffered through a rare industrial accident that has given her a fatal disease which will kill her before the age of…
Gorgeous is about a teenager who gets something everyone thinks they want: Becky goes from ordinary to astonishingly beautiful, magically. Along the way, she falls in love, becomes an international celebrity, and unravels the mystery of her mother’s life prior to Becky’s birth. It is an improbable but gripping journey, which takes the protagonist from…
Let’s start with the concept behind In the Vanisher’s Palace: it’s an f/f retelling of Beauty and the Beast in a hybrid sci-fi/fantasy setting infused with Vietnamese culture and fairy tales. I was extremely excited by this, and on the whole, I wasn’t disappointed. The devastating “breaking of the world” by an alien race known…
Nothing will make you relate to the heroine of Girl, Serpent, Thorn more than months of life lived during an unceasing quarantine. Soraya, too, is forever stuck in her own palace on the pain of death – and the deaths of those around her. But the tale Bashardoust weaves for the reader is enchanting and…
I love when the different elements of a story combine to create something greater than its whole. The strong hero and his brainy heroine. The setting you can jump right into. The storyline that is both familiar and yet strikingly new. Beauty and the Clockwork Beast weaves all of these things into a wry and…
This title was originally self-published in 2012. Intisar Khanani’s Thorn is a beautiful fairytale for young adults (but may honestly be read by people of all ages) about an outspoken princess touched by magic who must remake her life as a goose girl when a sorceress swaps her body with that of a servant. Alyrra,…