I have always loved fairy tales, they were some of my favourite stories growing up and I still love them now. I don’t know what it is about them, but no matter how many times I read the story or watch a film version they never fail to entertain me and spark my imagination. They were probably some of the first stories I read that made me fall in love with reading and the fantasy genre, I love reading about a world filled with magic and romance, where anything can happen. Add into that, I grew up with Disney movies which brought some of my favourite fairy tales to life, Beauty and the Beast and The Little Mermaid being among my top faves.
I’m always on the lookout for great retellings of fairy tales. I read every one I can find, always looking for a new twist on a loved classic. I love seeing how authors take the story and change it into something new. I have found some really great retellings lately, with a few authors that I continually go back too.
Sarah J Maas’ A Court of Thorns and Roses has been one of my more recent retelling favourites. A new spin on the beauty and the beast fairy tale, I’m eagerly awaiting the new addition to this series. I loved the characters in this book and the setting of a kingdom of faeries under the control of an evil woman. It really was taken in a new and interesting way, different to any of the other stories I’ve read.
K M Shea is an author I found through amazon while looking for something new to read on my kindle, who I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned before. She has a fairy tale retelling series, Timeless Fairy Tales, that I absolutely love! Each story follows different characters based on different fairy tales with a twist. Each of these can be read alone but in some stories there is sometimes a brief mention of a character from one of the other books so if you read them all it helps to create the full magical world.
The Scarecrow King: A Romantic Retelling of the King Thrushbeard Fairy Tale by Jill Myles is an easy and entertaining story, a fairy tale that I wasn’t too familiar with previously, but I really enjoyed this retelling. The characters’ relationship started out quite rocky but grew into something really sweet, it’s a good read for a quiet afternoon.
I really love finding fairy tale retellings, some authors just use some of the key details from the original stories and then go in a different direction with the characters and story, making something old new and fresh. Though as much as I do love finding something new, I have to admit I still always find the time to go back through my Hans Christian Anderson book of classic fairy tales to see where it all began.
Somewhere Only We Know 