the ask@AAR: What’s your favorite romance novel adaptation?
This week, I was reading Lisa’s review of These Violent Delights (coming out in November), a Romeo and Juliet retelling set in 1920s Shanghai. (She gave it an exuberant DIK.) The book sounds superb and it got me thinking about literary adaptations which… I love.
I recently read and so enjoyed Naomi Novik’s Rumplestiltskin-inspired Spinning Silver. I reread Nancy Werlin’s Impossible, a wonderful YA novel inspired by the classic folk ballad Scarborough Fair, as well as Edith Patou’s East, a mesmerizing remaking of Beauty and the Beast. (I have a soft spot for Beauty and the Beast retellings.) I’m looking forward to rereading Shannon Hale’s The Goose Girl–the whole series of the Books of Bayern was a recent Steal and Deal!
Whether it’s Austen inspired, based on a fairy tale, or reimagining Romeo and Juliet, AAR has loved (and loathed) many an adapted romance. How about you? What are your favorite adaptations in romance?
Judith Ivory. I liked The Proposition which is the Pygmalion story and the Beast which is beauty and the beast however, I liked the story but I didn’t really like either of the leads.
Favorite retelling of Pride and Prejudice that too few fans of the original have ever heard of: Pamela Aidan’s trilogy from Darcy’s point of view. All of the scenes from the original novel are basically intact. Aidan fills in the rest, including a hilarious valet, who offsets Darcy’s dourness.
The first book is called An Assembly Such as This: A Novel of Fitzwilliam Darcy, Gentleman
Thanks for this recommendation. I was able to get all three books from my local library. I did skim much of the 2nd book as it was very gothic and set in the time Darcy and Elizabeth are apart. This trilogy really reinforced the vast social gulf between Elizabeth and Darcy and made me realize how much of a Cinderella romance P&P is. Until this book, I never thought about how Darcy really changes from the beginning to the end of the novel, but it all occurs off the page, and I enjoyed seeing her try to explain one way it could have happened.
I am not a fan.
It’s a movie, not a book, but I liked “Ever After”, a retelling of the Cinderella story. I think one of the appeals was that Leonardo da Vinci was the fairy godmother. There is an error in the film that I didn’t notice until my sister, the art conservator, pointed it out. Nonetheless, I found the movie charming.
I love Ever After. It is, by far, my favorite Cinderella retelling. The king and queen are hilarious, Anjelica Houston has never been better, and Drew Barrymore is exactly the right blend of saving herself while still allowing herself to be loved.
I really enjoyed Ever After. I only wish Prince Henry hadn’t been so horrible when Danielle is found out. And she might have mentioned Angelica is her stepmother. I found it harder to forgive him than she did.
Yes–he could have been more aware. But I still love it. It’s like a fun movie for smart people!
I’ve seen it more times than I can count. It’s delightful and Anjelica Houston couldn’t be more perfect. I don’t mind the Prince being the damsel in distress, it’s a cute twist. If he had a bit more character it would be 100% perfect. Drew Barrymore brings a genuineness to the role and she had said she faced a few of her own demons while playing the part.
I also really love “The Slipper And The Rose” which is a musical version of Cinderella (not to be confused with the Rogers And Hammerstein one) written by the Sherman Brothers of Mary Poppins fame. It has a quirky fairy godmother and it takes place in a very “real” 18th century European setting where politics play a realistic and cynical part. It’s absolutely gorgeous in setting and costume design and the songs are wonderful. And it has my all time favorite pair of glass slippers ever.
I can’t think of any adaptations that I’ve loved, but I do remember being terribly disappointed by Mary Balogh’s Slightly Dangerous. I didn’t have home internet access back then so I couldn’t access reviews like I do today. I had so looked forward to Wulfric’s story that I even bought the hardcover (what was I thinking?) but partway through I realised it was a retelling of Pride and Prejudice, which felt like a real cop-out on the author’s part. Wulfric deserved a story that was original and surprising. I never re-read it and donated that eye-wateringly expensive book years ago.
Mention of Austen adaptations (which I rarely read) reminded me of a book released a few years ago: Heartstone by Elle Katharine White. This is both a well-done adventurous fantasy and a P&P homage.
I also really liked Heartstone. It follows P&P pretty closely but I loved the fantasy elements.
Like Blackjack, I’m tired of all the Austen retellings and usually avoid them like the plague, but Sally Malcolm’s first New Milton book, Perfect Day is an excellent m/m retelling of Persuasion – she did a great job of creating a believeable reason for the eight year separation which is difficult to do, considering in the original it’s down to the sort of parental/friendship pressure that a character would probably discount today.
Eloisa James’s Fairy Tales series has some good ones, especially _When Beauty Tamed the Beast_.
I adore Rachel Smythe’s retelling of the Persephone/Hades romance, _Lore Olympus_. That might be my favorite in a long time.
I am though growing a little tired of so many Austen retellings.
Agree re Austen re-treads. Hard to top perfection!!
Co-signing this. And there are so many of them! Every time I see one I just think “Really?” Can’t think of anything else? No other authors to borrow from?
And especially considering new works enter the public domain every year now in the US, you think they could mine some lesser known stuff…
Here are our adaptation tags!
Jane Austen: https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/jane-austen-adaptation/
Fairy Tale: https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/fairy-tale/
Cinderella: https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/cinderella
Beauty and the Beast: https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/beauty-and-the-beast/
Pygmalion: https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/pygmalion/
Cyrano (a character falls in love writing letters under another name): https://allaboutromance.com/review-tag/Cyrano-plot/
It’s been years since I read it and it’s not my favorite of Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton books, but An Offer from a Gentleman is a pretty cute Cinderella story (bonus: one of the stepsisters turns out to be lovely).
The Henchmen of Zenda by KJ Charles is wonderful. It might be even better if you’re familiar with The Prisoner of Zenda, which I was not.
Agreed on the KJC. I do know the original and I loved seeing all the nods back to it, but it’s also a fabulous story in its own right!
Ravished, by Amanda Quick, already mentioned, is probably my favorite riff on Beauty & the Beast.
Mercedes Lackey has a series set in a world in which there is a form of magic that pushes people to follow fairy-tale archetypes:
Five Hundred Kingdoms
1. The Fairy Godmother (2003)
2. One Good Knight (2006)
3. Fortune’s Fool (2007)
4. The Snow Queen (2008)
5. The Sleeping Beauty (2010)
6. Beauty and the Werewolf (2011)
7. A Tangled Web (2012)
I’ve read The Fairy Godmother, the first in the series, five times. It is a wonderful story about a potential Cinderella who become much more. It is among my favorite competent woman stories.
On the erotic romance side, Cinderella Unmasked by Bonnie Dee & Marie Treanor is a story of what a Cinderella does after the prince runs off leaving her to rule.
Probably my favorite adaptation is Sherry Thomas’ Delicious, a very creative redo of Cinderella. It’s both playful and dark, with Thomas’ amazing prose spicing things up along the way. And the nor to footwear is my absolute favorite part!!
I like Delicious although it’s not my favorite. (I do feel, however, we need to re-review the book. It is NOT a C+.) But it has the second best secondary romance in any Thomas’ book. (The first being the one in Private Arrangements.)
Delicious is actually one of the few (two?) Sherry Thomas books I have yet to read (I save them up for when I’m desperate for something good!) So *salutes* I’m on it!
I’m not sure if this counts, but my favorite Shakespeare adaptation by far is the Golden Globe Theatre’s production of Twelfth Night starring Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry in an all male cast. The costumes are refreshingly period appropriate to the point where the costume designer said she would have refused to use a button mold that was created even one year after the play was written. That’s some hard core commitment to accuracy, and Shakespeare adaptations could use a lot more of that. Watch it on DVD if you can. It’s excellent!
I cannot watch most Shakespeare adaptations whether on stage or screen because Elizabethan English + period-inappropriate costumes and/or settings = major pet peeve. My take is, if you are going to use the original script complete with its “thees,” “thous,” and “poxes upon thees,” the characters better not be dressed like they live in the mid-1800s when they belong in the late 1500s/early 1600s. Adaptations that use the original source material but update the language accordingly to suit the characters and settings, a la West Side Story, naturally get a pass. But original Shakespearean text plus anachronistic costumes get a hard pass from me, no exceptions.
Bec McMaster’s “Promise Of Darkness” is a very loose version of the old Persephone myth that I enjoyed. One of my favorite books generally inspired by “Beauty and The Beast” (but again very loosely) is Amanda Quick’s “Ravished”. I tend to enjoy books that use the theme as an idea or inspiration but not too strictly.
I can think of a lot that have a Cinderella element where someone acts as a Fairy Godmother to the heroine. I like to be surprised a bit when I read so I don’t like stories that are slavishly faithful to original (especially if it’s something like Romeo and Juliet) Lol.
I liked that one too although I think it’s a very loose adaptation.
I, too, am a big fan of Beauty & the Beast adaptations. Skye Warren wrote a rather dark series called BEAUTY AND THE PROFESSOR, which (in addition to the scarred hero) included age gap and class/wealth imbalances.
I just read Caitlin Crews’s most recent HP, CLAIMED IN THE ITALIAN’S CASTLE, a very overt retelling of the Bluebeard legend. I thought it was excellent—and so full of the trappings of a gothic novel that when a character referred to herself as being a social media influencer, I had to remind myself the book is set in the 21st century.
A. Zavarelli published an extremely dark (I can’t emphasize that enough) retelling of Cinderella called STEALING CINDERELLA. I like dark, but the book should come with a lot of content/trigger warnings.
Also, I’ve read at least three books this year that use the myth of Persephone and Hades as a symbolic backdrop: Natasha Knight’s dark crime romance, DESCENT; Jackie Ashenden’s HP, THE SPANIARD’S MARRIAGE REVENGE; and another dark crime romance, Ava Harrison’s CORRUPT KINGDOM (this one even features a dog named Cerberus!).