TTT: Ten Fairytale Retellings I've Read/Want To Read

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly meme created by the wonderful, list making gurus, The Broke and the Bookish. Each week they publish a new Top Ten list and invite their fellow book bloggers, bloggers and bookworms to join in.
So today is my turn to do a top ten list, and as soon as Caz mentioned fairy tales she had my total and undevided attention. I love books in general but I am a total sucker for fairy tales of any sort. Legends, myths, tales, stories you name it and tell it and I will be your happy listener.
Now I haven’t read all of these so this is a bit of a mixture but they are all on my kindle in the reading pile to either be relived and enjoyed once again, or to be taken on a new adventure. I should add that these are in no particular order except that which sprang to mind ☺
1 – Splintered Trilogy by A.G.Howard
To those of you who know me well this will come to no surprise as being my first choice. I positively loved this trilogy, all the way from the cover, through the story and colour of ink all the way to the credits. I cannot praise or recommend this series enough to all of you book and fairy tale lovers. I enjoyed the bizarness of Alice in Wonderland and always thought it a little quirky in a funny way but at the end of the day Alice woke up and it was all just a dream. But A.G.Howard catapulted me down a rabbit hole where bizarreness has taken on a dark, dangerous and intriguingly beautiful edge. Madness and genius are to sides of a sharp knife that plunges you into a colourful darkness you will not wish to emerge from. Just talking to you about it makes me want to re-read this series all over again! This is a very short summary of what is an amazing retelling with more twists than you would expect, and I would keep going on but time to move onto my next top ten, but you get my point. READ IT!!!!
2 – Adventures in Neverland by Anna Katmore
I recently came across this duology, I have read the first one and am currently reading it’s sequel. It was an interesting spin on Peter Pan’s story and origin where perhaps not all is as it’s seems. Maybe Peter isn’t actually a good natured and fun loving young boy, and maybe the enchanment stopping everyone from growing up is more like a curse, one that Angelina has every intention to break if she doesn’t want to forget her home, her family and all that she holds dear. But even that comes at a price. Anna Katmore has a simple and yet lovely style of writing that breezed me through the pirate sails, the mermaid lagoon and the lost boy’s tree all the way back home leaving me wanting another fly-by which is why I didn’t wait long to read Pan’s Revenge.
3 – Heartbound by P.I. Alltraine
Having read how much enjoyed Neverland our fearless blog leader, Caz, approached me Heartbound. The cover was rather insipiring and then having read the synopsis and realizing it was yet another different recollection and retelling of my new found friend Peter Pan, well I simply couldn’t say no! So watch this space to read my upcoming review but it’s sounding very promising, and heaven knows I’m going to need another fix of pixie dust when I finish Pan’s Revenge *smiles cheekily*
4 – Beastly by Alex Flinn
In my time prior to blogging I stumbled across this book when I was house bound with the good old flu. I researched amazon for a new read and every time I searched the recommendations from those who’d read my favourite books this one just kept popping up, so eventually I caved, used my mother’s card details very sneakily and bought the book. And very much fell in love with the modern time retelling of Beauty and the Beast. I will admit I missed Lumiere, Cogsworth and Miss Potts but Alex Flinn made up for it. I particularly enjoyed how she related the simple and yet important morale of the story to our times and our young society. Beauty is not skin deep and is in the eye of the beholder, not the media or fashion magazines. I’ve read this book countless times and watched the film a few times too. I am not too ashamed to admit that Alex Pettyfer made a rather nice Beast :p but the book is always the best 😉 I will also admit that after having read it I simply had to re-watch the Disney version because I am a saddo and love the music and the story I grew up with.
5 – Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce
This was recommended to me by Caroline, as she knew my love for fairy tales with a different spin on them or perhaps just a slight alteration. And having just read Beastly it seemed like the perfect book to follow onto. This is a retelling of Little Red Riding hood, although this time she’s not little and there are two of them. The story pleasantly surprised me and I very much enjoyed Jackson Pearce’s style of writing to the point that I went in search of more of his work and As You Wish was another very nice discovery! I shan’t say more but it was definitely a very welcome recommendation and was sad to return the book to its rightful owner ☹ I shall however be getting my little non-grubby mitts onto my own copy soon enough, and might I suggest you do the same 😉
6 – Twelve Dancing Princesses by Jessica Day George
This is a trilogy series of books that I came across a while ago and have still, frustratingly, not been able to read although I own all 3 of them. It is a retelling of the original Twelve Dancing Princesses story that admittedly not many know of. Each book is a sister princess with her own sets of trials, tribulations, a kingdom to save a prince charming’s heart to win. I will endeavor to read these soon with a bit of luck!
7 – The Goddess Series by Aimee Carter
Ok I will admit this is a little bit of a cheeky entry but just let me explain my decision before you condemn this book worm. Fairy tales come from myths and legends and well The Goddess Series is based on legends and mythology that goes a lot further back than Hans Christian Andersen. The Goddess Series is based on the Greek and Roman gods and their pesky meddlings with us humans, and the quest that all sentient beings voluntarily or not go on – that of the search for love. It is a heart-wrenching trilogy that I passionately read and re-read whilst painstakingly awaiting the release of each sequel. I feel deserves a place here as it is story based on legends and myths that I have always loved as a child and that (thankfully) Aimee Carter decided to put together to create a more complex story of family, betrayal, revenge, truth and, ofcourse the constant in any true fairytale, love. The pace and style of writing heart-pounding and yet gentle, slow and yet the end came too quick. It is definitely a series that is now complete I would recommend.
8 – Cinder by Marissa Meyer
I am somewhat ashamed to admit that a fairytale lover and book worm such as myself has not yet read this very much acclaimed retelling of one of the classic Princess Stories. Cinder recounts it’s extended namesake: Cinderella. Except now she’s a cyborg and she’s in the future. One can only wonder how Marissa Meyer managed to work a glass slipper onto a cyborg’s foot. Or if indeed it is glass at all. Maybe it’s bullet proof and has rocket launchers underneath!! Don’t know about you but I am intrigued to find out though!!!
9 – A Kiss in Time by Alex Flinn
Yup this is another Flinn book as she seems to have a soft spot like me for fairytales. I think the title sufficiently hints to the character this retelling is based upon lol but for those of you who perhaps are not familiar with the Disney classics this is Sleeping Beauty story. Except her prince charming wakes her up, by accident, several centuries later. I’ll be honest it wasn’t at all what I expected but I had a laugh reading it and seeing how it all turned out because let me tell you, prince charming and sleeping beauty do not get along! The additional interest was generated when Alex Flinn added at alternate chapters both of their points of view allowing the usually silenced prince to have a voice of his own. Something, I should add, she did in Beastly too! A Kiss in Time the led me to discover several other slight variations of the original story one of my favourites being Spellbound by Cara Lynn Shultz.
10 – The Treachery of Beautiful Things by Ruth Frances Long
I thought I would finish with something not quite so airy-fairy and with no princesses to speak of. The Treachery of Beautiful Things was a deliciously dark book. Yes it has sprites, magic and fairies but the more beautiful they are the more life threatening they reveal themselves to be. I positively loved this book and it’s author if anything for the originality of it all. It’s like someone had taken a bit of every Disney and then darkened it all with evil, where good just doesn’t have it quite as easy as it normally does. It was a page turner, written in faerie language, full of riddles as nothing is quite what it seems making all the more alluring. Ruth Frances Long did an amazing job and I have been itching for more of her work so I think it’s about time I tracked down something new of hers and sank my teeth into it.
Posted by Prudence