Fairy Tale Retellings – A Reading List

For The Wolf by Hannah Whitten

Inspiration drawn from: Red Riding Hood, some say also Beauty & the Beast
Content blurb: The first daughter is for the Throne. The second daughter is for the Wolf.
As the only Second Daughter born in centuries, Red has one purpose – to be sacrificed to the Wolf in the Wood in the hope he’ll return the world’s captured gods.
Name of Main Characters: Redarys aka Red & Eammon
Have I read: Yes, ★★★★★ Review on the blog
Noteworthy: It is a duology and the second book is call “For the Throne” which I will read during the winter.

Daughter of the Moon Goddess by Sue Lynn Tan

Inspiration drawn from: Legend of Chang’e, the Chinese moon goddess
Content Blurb: Growing up on the moon, Xingyin is accustomed to solitude, unaware that she is being hidden from the feared Celestial Emperor who exiled her mother for stealing his elixir of immortality. But when Xingyin’s magic flares and her existence is discovered, she is forced to flee her home, leaving her mother behind. Alone, powerless, and afraid, she makes her way to the Celestial Kingdom, a land of wonder and secrets. 
Name of Main Characters: Xingyin
Have I read: Yes, ★★★★★ Read Review on the blog
Noteworthy: Book 1 of the The Celestial Kingdom

Spinning Silver by Naomi Novik

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Rumpelstiltskin and Russia’s Father Frost
Content blurb: Miryem is the daughter and granddaughter of moneylenders, but her father’s inability to collect his debts has left his family on the edge of poverty – until Miryem takes matters into her own hands. Hardening her heart, the young woman sets out to claim what is owed and soon gains a reputation for being able to turn silver into gold. When an ill-advised boast draws the attention of the king of the Staryk – grim fey creatures who seem more ice than flesh – Miryem’s fate, and that of two kingdoms, will be forever altered.
Name of Main Characters: Miryem & Staryk
Have I read: Yes, ★★★★ No review on the blog – how did that happen…

The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey

Inspiration drawn from: Russian Snow Maiden and the a widespread European Folktale Snow Child
Content blurb: Alaska, 1920: a brutal place to homestead, and especially tough for recent arrivals Jack and Mabel. Childless, they are drifting apart–he breaking under the weight of the work of the farm; she crumbling from loneliness and despair. In a moment of levity during the season’s first snowfall, they build a child out of snow. The next morning the snow child is gone – but they glimpse a young, blonde-haired girl running through the trees. 
Name of Main Characters: Jack & Mabel and Faina/Snegurochka
Have I read: Yes, ★★★★ Review on the blog

The Bear and the Nightingale

Inspiration drawn from: Russians Father Frost aka Morozko
Content blurb: At the edge of the Russian wilderness, winter lasts most of the year and the snowdrifts grow taller than houses. But Vasilisa doesn’t mind—she spends the winter nights huddled around the embers of a fire with her beloved siblings, listening to her nurse’s fairy tales. Above all, she loves the chilling story of Frost, the blue-eyed winter demon, who appears in the frigid night to claim unwary souls.
Name of Main Characters: Vasilisa
Have I read: Yes, ★★★★ Review on the blog

Uprooted by Naomi Novik

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Rapunzel
Content blurb: Agnieszka loves her valley home, her quiet village, the forests and the bright shining river. But the corrupted Wood stands on the border, full of malevolent power, and its shadow lies over her life. Her people rely on the cold, driven wizard known only as the Dragon to keep its powers at bay. But he demands a terrible price for his help: one young woman handed over to serve him for ten years, a fate almost as terrible as falling to the Wood.
Name of Main Characters: Agnieszka & Dragon
Have I read: Yes, ★★★✶ Review on the blog

Red Cape Society Series by Melanie Karsak

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Red Riding Hood
Content blurb: When London’s brightest tinkers and alchemists come up missing, Red Cape Society Agent Clemeny Louvel is on the case. To help her get the problem in hand, Queen Victoria assigns her a temporary partner—a werewolf with a knightly history and a tendency to be far too flirtatious for either of their good. Can she trust him to help her chase down the monsters they’re hunting?
Name of Main Characters: Clemeny Louvel & Lionheart
Have I read: Yes, Book 1 ★★★✶, Book 2 ★★★, Book 3 ★★★, Book 4 ★★★✶, Book 5 ★★★✶, Book 6 ★★★ Read review on the blog

Enchanted Sonata by Heather Dixon Wallwork

Inspiration drawn from: The Nutcracker ballet by Pjotr Tschaikowski and Grimm’s Pied Piper of Hamelin
Content Blurb: Clara Stahlbaum has her future perfectly planned: to marry the handsome pianist, Johann Kahler (ah!) and settle down to a life full of music. But all that changes on Christmas Eve, when Clara receives a mysterious and magical nutcracker.  Whisked away to his world—an enchanted empire of beautiful palaces, fickle fairies, enormous rats, and a prince—Clara must face a magician who uses music as spells…and the future she thought she wanted.
Name of Main Characters: Clara Stahlbaum & Johann Kahler
Have I read: ★★★★ Review on the blog

Splintered Spindle by Alix E. Harrow

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
Content blurb: It’s Zinnia Gray’s twenty-first birthday, which is extra-special because it’s the last birthday she’ll ever have. When she was young, an industrial accident left Zinnia with a rare condition. Not much is known about her illness, just that no one has lived past twenty-one.
Name of Main Characters: Zinnia Gray
Have I read: Not yet but it is very high on my list.
Noteworthy: Book 1 in the Fractured Fables Series
Have I read: ★★★★ Review on the blog

A Mirror Mended by Alix E. Harrow

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Snow White
Content blurb: Zinnia Gray, professional fairy-tale fixer and lapsed Sleeping Beauty, is over rescuing snoring princesses. Once you’ve rescued a dozen damsels and burned fifty spindles, once you’ve gotten drunk with twenty good fairies and made out with one too many members of the royal family, you start to wish some of these girls would just get a grip and try solving their own narrative issues.
Name of Main Characters: Zinnia Gray
Have I read: Not yet but it is high on my list.
Noteworthy: Book 2 in the Fractured Fables Serie

North Echo by Joanna Ruth Meyer

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Red Riding Hood
Content blurb: Echo Alkaev’s safe and carefully structured world falls apart when her father leaves for the city and mysteriously disappears. Believing he is lost forever, Echo is shocked to find him half-frozen in the winter forest six months later, guarded by a strange talking wolf—the same creature who attacked her as a child. 
Name of Main Characters: Echo Alkaev
Have I read: Not yet but it is high on my list.

Thornhedge by T. Kingfisher

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Sleeping Beauty
Content blurb: There’s a princess trapped in a tower. This isn’t her story.
Meet Toadling. On the day of her birth, she was stolen from her family by the fairies, but she grew up safe and loved in the warm waters of faerieland. Once an adult though, the fae ask a favor of Toadling: return to the human world and offer a blessing of protection to a newborn child. Simple, right?
Name of Main Characters: Toadling
Have I read: Yes ★★★✶, Review on the blog
Noteworthy: Read recap on Engies blog.

The Wolf and the Woodsman by Ava Reid

Inspiration drawn from: Hungarian history and Jewish mythology
Content blurb: In her forest-veiled pagan village, Évike is the only woman without power, making her an outcast clearly abandoned by the gods. The villagers blame her corrupted bloodline—her father was a Yehuli man, one of the much-loathed servants of the fanatical king. When soldiers arrive from the Holy Order of Woodsmen to claim a pagan girl for the king’s blood sacrifice, Évike is betrayed by her fellow villagers and surrendered.
Name of Main Characters: Évike & Gáspár Bárány
Have I read: Not yet but I am intrigued.

Snow So White by C. Gockel

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Snow White
Content blurb: In the tiny village of Somer, far from the city, Cherie knows nothing of the evil spell. Her home is a safe, Magickal place. The Fae travel freely along its roads, Magickal humans and animals are welcome, and everyone is hidden from the Queen’s sight by Jack Frost, the local ghost, who blurs the Queen’s mirror with snow and ice.
Name of Main Characters: Cherie & Jack Frost
Have I read: Not yet
Noteworthy: Book 1 in the Urban Magick & Folklore Series

Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Snow White Rapunzel, Red Riding Hood and Cinderella
Content blurb: Humans and androids crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the population. From space, a ruthless Lunar people watch, waiting to make their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl. . . . Throughout the series more and more characters will e introduced each book focusing on one specific character.
Name of Main Characters: Cinder, Scarlet & Wolf, Cress, Princess Winter & Jacin,
Have I read: Not yet read
Noteworthy: Four Books in the Series

Gilded & Cursed by Marissa Meyer

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Rumpelstiltskin
Content blurb: Long ago cursed by the god of lies, a poor miller’s daughter has developed a talent for spinning stories that are fantastical and spellbinding and entirely untrue. Or so everyone believes.
Name of Main Characters: Serilda & Gild, Erlking
Have I read: Not yet
Noteworthy:This is a duology – Book 1 Gilded, Book 2 Cursed

The Goose Girl by Shannon Hale

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Goose Girl
Content blurb: She was born with her eyes closed and a word on her tongue, a word she could not taste. Her name was Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee, Crown Princess of Kildenree, and she spent the first years of her life listening to her aunt’s stories and learning the language of the birds, especially the swans. And when she was older, she watched as a colt was born, and she heard the first word on his tongue, his name, Falada.
Name of Main Characters: Anidori-Kiladra Talianna Isilee
Have I read:
Noteworthy: Book 1 of the Bayern Series

The Bloodleaf by Crystal Smith

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Goose Girl
Content blurb: Aurelia is a princess, but they call her a witch. Surrounded by spirits and burdened with forbidden magic, she lives in constant fear of discovery by the witch-hunting Tribunal and their bloodthirsty mobs. There’s something deeply amiss soon she finds herself swept into a deadly new mystery with a secretive prince, the ghost of an ancient queen, and a poison vine called Bloodleaf.
Name of Main Characters: Aurelia
Have I read: Not yet
Noteworthy: Book 1 in the Series Bloodleaf

Little Thieves by Margaret Owen

Inspiration drawn from: Grimm’s Goose Girl
Content blurb: Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother’s love. The adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, Vanja has long made her own way in the world as the dutiful servant of Princess Gisele. Until a year ago, when her otherworldly mothers demanded payment for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back . . . by stealing Gisele’s life.
Name of Main Characters: Vanja Schmidt
Have I read: Not yet
Noteworthy: Book 1 in the Little Thieves Series

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge

Inspiration drawn from: The Beauty & the Beast ballet by Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve
Content Blurb: Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him. With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate.
Name of Main Characters: Nyx, Ignifex
Have I read: Not yet

Upon a Frosted Star by M.A. Kuzniar

Inspiration drawn from: from Swan Lake by Pjotr Iljitsch Tschaikowski
Content blurb: When struggling artist, Forster, finds an invitation, he’s bewitched by the magic of the evening, swept up in the glamour of this notorious annual party and intrigued as to who is behind them. Determined to find out more about the mysterious host, Forster discovers an abandoned manor house silent with secrets and a cursed woman who is desperate to be free…
Name of Main Characters: Forster – artist
Have I read: Yes ★★★★ Review to come