As children, we love fairy tales. Our parents read them to us before bedtime, we watch Disney transform them from page to screen, we even pretend to be the princess in the castle, or the prince fighting the evil villain. As we start to grow up, we realize the tales aren’t nearly as PG as Disney wants us to believe, but we still enjoy them, and are entranced by their magic. Once we become adults, the magic seems to disappear. We might still watch the movies, read the books to our children, but there aren’t nearly as many books geared toward us. There are the children’s books, the children’s movies, and that’s it. It’s as if society doesn’t want adults to continue to experience that magic and enchantment.
Until now. Writers are starting to realize the fairy tale genre is alive and well, and readers want to continue to be taken to far off lands full of heroes, heroines, villains, and in some cases, maybe even a dragon. The latest trend is taking some of our favorite classic fairy tales, such as Cinderella and Beauty and the Beast, and reworking them. Here are six books that will transport you to imaginary lands full of magic, romance, and in some cases, danger.
Kyle Kingsbury, while both rich and handsome, is also an extremely superficial and callous person. When he pulls a prank on a girl in his class who ends up being a witch, she puts a spell on him, forcing him to become a hideous beast. His only hope: Fall in love within two years and seal it with a kiss, or remain a beast forever.
Cinder is a mechanic cyborg living in futuristic China where she has no freedom, no rights, and next to no friends or family. When Prince Kai stops by her booth to have his android fixed by Cinder, their lives are immediately intertwined. Cinder and Kai are forced to deal with a deadly plague, a potentially dangerous alliance, and multiple betrayals and secrets that will change their lives forever.
Feyre is the breadwinner for her extremely poor family, and when she comes home with a wolf instead of her usual kill, everything changes. She is made to pay for her crime by going to live with an immortal faerie named Tamlin. As her time there increases, her feelings for Tamlin change, and she is thrown headfirst into their tempting, but extremely dark, dangerous, and complicated world.
Cress is a sixteen-year-old girl who has spent most of her life in isolation on a satellite in space. As Queen Levana’s personal hacker, she has communicated with multiple people, including on-the run criminal Cinder. After her rescue mission goes awry, Cress is forced to trust near-stranger Thorne while Cinder and the others try to save her, and the world.
Scarlet Benoit lives in France with her grandmother and helps run the family farm. When her grandmother goes missing, she must team up with a mysterious stranger named Wolf to try to not only save her grandmother, but also protect the secrets her grandmother has been guarding for all of these years.
Every year, the Dragon chooses a young woman from the village to serve in his tower for ten years in exchange for providing protection from the dark Wood. Agnieszka, and the rest of the village, fully expects her friend Kasia to be taken, but when Agnieszka is chosen instead, she is forced to not only be imprisoned with a wizard who hates her, but also fight alongside him to save her village from the evil Wood.