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🧲 Books like this

Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch

Serena Valentino · back to the book

What’s in it

Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.

24 books with the same feel

Include books by the same author
❤️

Forest of a Thousand Lanterns

Julie C. Dao · 373 pages

Eighteen-year-old Xifeng is beautiful. The stars say she is destined for greatness, that she is meant to be Empress of Feng Lu. But only if she embraces the darkness within her. Growing up as a peasant in a forgotten village on the edge of the map, Xifeng longs to fulfill the destiny promised to her by her cruel aunt, the witch Guma, who has read the cards and seen glimmers of Xifeng's majestic fu

Villain ProtagonistFairy Tale RetellingMorally Gray CharacterFantasy
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To Kill a Kingdom

Alexandra Christo · 344 pages

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingMorally Gray CharacterFantasy
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The Sea Queen

Jovee Winters · 196 pages

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistFantasy
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Because You Love to Hate Me: 13 Tales of Villainy

Renee Ahdieh, Soman Chainani, Susan Dennard, Sarah Enni, Marissa Meyer, Cindy Pon, Victoria Schwab, Samantha Shannon, Adam Silvera, Andrew Smith, April Genevieve Tucholke, Nicola Yoon, Sasha Alsberg, Whitney Atkinson, Tina Burke, Catriona Feeney, Jesse George, Zoe Herdt, Samantha Lane, Sophia Lee, R · 353 pages

**LEAVE IT TO THE HEROES TO SAVE THE WORLD--VILLAINS JUST WANT TO *RULE* THE WORLD.** In this unique anthology, thirteen acclaimed, bestselling authors team up with thirteen influential booktubers to reimagine the origin stories of the villains we love to hate--infamous foes from fairy tales, mythology, and brand-new worlds. Based on comic book-inspired enemies in pop culture and classics su

Villain ProtagonistFairy Tale RetellingMorally Gray CharacterFantasy
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Fairest

Marissa Meyer · 384 pages

In this stunning bridge book between Cress and Winter in the bestselling Lunar Chronicles, Queen Levana’s story is finally told. Mirror, mirror on the wall, Who is the fairest of them all? Fans of the Lunar Chronicles know Queen Levana as a ruler who uses her “glamour” to gain power. But long before she crossed paths with Cinder, Scarlet, and Cress, Levana lived a very different story – a s

Villain ProtagonistFairy Tale RetellingMorally Gray CharacterFantasy
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Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Gregory Maguire · 448 pages

When Dorothy triumphed over the Wicked Witch of the West in L. Frank Baum's classic tale, we heard only her side of the story. But what about her arch-nemesis, the mysterious witch? Where did she come from? How did she become so wicked? And what is the true nature of evil? Gregory Maguire creates a fantasy world so rich and vivid that we will never look at Oz the same way again. Wicked is about a

Villain ProtagonistFairy Tale RetellingWitches & WitchcraftFantasy
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The Queen of Oz

Danielle Paige · 95 pages

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistWitches & WitchcraftFantasy
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Fathomless

Jackson Pearce

Celia, who shares mental powers with her triplet sisters, finds competition for a handsome boy with Lo, a sea monster who must persuade a mortal to love her and steal his soul to earn back her humanity.

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasyDark
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Witcher Stories Boxed Set

Andrzej Sapkowski · 752 pages

Fairy Tale RetellingWitches & WitchcraftMorally Gray CharacterFantasy
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The Mermaid's Madness

Jim C. Hines · 339 pages

"There is an old story--you might have heard it--about a young mermaid, the daughter of a king, who saved the life of a human prince and fell in love. So innocent was her love, so pure her devotion, that she would pay any price for the chance to be with her prince. She gave up her voice, her family, and the sea, and became human. But the prince fell in love with another woman. The tales say the li

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasy
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Drown

Esther Dalseno · 270 pages

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasyDark
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Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasyYoung Adult
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Sink or Swim

Sarah Mlynowski · 165 pages

Once again Abby and her brother Jonah go through the magic mirror in their basement, and this time they find themselves interfering in the Little Mermaid story--and needing to set things right and make sure everyone has a happy ending.

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasy
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Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook

Christina Henry · 297 pages

"From the national bestselling author of Alice comes a familiar story with a dark hook--a tale about Peter Pan and the friend who became his nemesis, a nemesis who may not be the blackhearted villain Peter says he is ..."-- "On an island lives a boy called Peter and his band of merry lost boys, young forever. That is, unless they get sick or killed by pirates or eaten by crocodiles or unless--i

Villain ProtagonistFairy Tale RetellingFantasyDark
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Dark Shimmer

Donna Jo Napoli · 353 pages

A retelling of Snow White from the evil step mother's point of view as fifteen-year-old Dolce grows up on islands in a Venetian lagoon where she learns how to make mirrors, but when her mother dies she is taken in by a widower and his daughter while she secretly continues making mirrors and slowly goes mad from mercury poisoning.

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistFantasyDark
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Fortune's Fool

Mercedes Lackey · 365 pages

The seventh daughter of the Sea King, Ekaterina is more than a pampered princess--she's also the family spy. Which makes her the perfect emissary to check out interesting happenings in the neighboring kingdom...and nothing interests her more than Sasha, the seventh son of the king of Belrus. Ekaterina suspects he's far from the fool people think him. But before she can find out what lies beneath h

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasy
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A Little Siren

May Sage · 228 pages

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasy
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The Queen of the Damned

Anne Rice · 491 pages

Akasha, the most powerful living vampire and queen of the undead, is awoken from her statue like existence by the vampire lestat playing his rock music. She immediately sets out on the hunt for both mortal and vampire victims alike. Her ultimate goal to create an earth completely dominated by vampires.

Villain ProtagonistWitches & WitchcraftMorally Gray CharacterFantasy
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Mermaid

Carolyn Turgeon

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasy
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The Isle of the Lost

Melissa de la Cruz

Imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost, the teenaged children of Disney's most evil villains search for a dragon's eye, the key to true darkness and the villains' only hope of escape.

Villain ProtagonistFairy Tale RetellingFantasyYoung Adult
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The Mermaid's Daughter

Ann Claycomb · 451 pages

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasy
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Long Live Evil

Sarah Rees Brennan · 431 pages

Villain ProtagonistMorally Gray CharacterFantasyDark
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The Little Mermaid

Michael Teitelbaum

Mermaids and SirensFairy Tale RetellingFantasy
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Troll's Eye View: A Book of Villainous Tales

Ellen Datlow, Terri Windling

Everyone thinks they know the real story behind the villains in fairy tales—evil, no two ways about it. But the villains themselves beg to differ. In Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling's new anthology for younger readers, you'll hear from the Giant's wife ("Jack and the Beanstalk"), Rumplestiltskin, the oldest of the Twelve Dancing Princesses, and many more. A stellar lineup of authors, including Gar

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistFantasy

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