AmongReaders.com Add a tiny library
📚 AmongReaders — track what you read, talk chapter by chapter without spoilers, and read with friends. Free.Join AmongReadersSign in

🧲 Books like this

Dark Shimmer

Donna Jo Napoli · 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
❤️

Queen of Hearts

Colleen Oakes · 313 pages

Dinah is the princess who will one day reign over Wonderland. She has not yet seen the dark depths of her kingdom; she longs only for her father s approval and a future with the boy she loves. But when a betrayal breaks her heart and threatens her throne, she is launched into Wonderland s dangerous political game. Dinah must stay one step ahead of her cunning enemies or she ll lose not just the cr

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

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

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

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

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistFantasyYoung Adult
❤️

Maleficent

Elizabeth Rudnick · 272 pages

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistFantasyYoung Adult
❤️

The School for Good and Evil

Soman Chainani · 496 pages

**A dark and enchanting fantasy adventure perfect for those who prefer their fairytales with a twist. The first in the bestselling School for Good and Evil series.** Every four years, two girls are kidnapped from the village of Gavaldon. Legend has it these lost children are sent to the School for Good and Evil, the fabled institution where they become fairytale heroes or villains. With her

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

Poor Unfortunate Soul: A Tale of the Sea Witch

Serena Valentino · 208 pages

The story of the Little Mermaid from the perspective of the sea witch Ursula.

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

Never Never

Brianna Shrum · 368 pages

James Hook is a child who only wants to grow up. When he meets Peter Pan, a boy who loves to pretend and is intent on never becoming a man, James decides he could try being a child - at least briefly. James joins Peter Pan on a holiday to Neverland, a place of adventure created by children's dreams, but Neverland is not for the faint of heart. Soon James finds himself longing for home, determin

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

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.

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

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

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

The Queen of Oz

Danielle Paige · 95 pages

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistYoung AdultFantasy
❤️

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

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistFantasyDark
❤️

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

Fairy Tale RetellingVillain ProtagonistFantasyFemale Lead
❤️

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
❤️

The Young Elites

Marie Lu · 392 pages

I am tired of being used, hurt, and cast aside. Adelina Amouteru is a survivor of the blood fever. A decade ago, the deadly illness swept through her nation. Most of the infected perished, while many of the children who survived were left with strange markings. Adelina’s black hair turned silver, her lashes went pale, and now she has only a jagged scar where her left eye once was. Her cruel fat

Villain ProtagonistYoung AdultVeniceFantasy
🙂

The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold

Francesca Lia Block · 240 pages

With language that is both lyrical and distinctly her own, Francesca Lia Block turns nine fairy tales inside out.Escaping the poisoned apple, Snow frees herself from possession to find the truth of love in an unexpected place.A club girl from L.A., awakening from a long sleep to the memories of her past, finally finds release from its curse.And Beauty learns that Beasts can understand more than me

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

Insanity

Cameron Jace · 254 pages

After accidentally killing everyone in her class, Alice Wonder is now a patient in the Radcliffe Lunatic Asylum. No one doubts her insanity. Only a hookah-smoking professor believes otherwise; that he can prove her sanity by decoding Lewis Carroll's paintings, photographs, and find Wonderland's real whereabouts. Professor Caterpillar persuades the asylum that Alice can save lives and catch the won

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

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.

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

Kill Me Softly

Sarah Cross · 336 pages

When sixteen-year-old Mira runs away to discover her secret past, she finds a place where Grimm's fairy tales come to life, and she cannot avoid her accursed fate.

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

Cruel Beauty

Rosamund Hodge · 357 pages

Betrothed to the demon who rules her country and trained all her life to kill him, seventeen-year-old Nyx Triskelion must now fulfill her destiny and move to the castle to be his wife.

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

Unhinged

A.G. Howard · 395 pages

LAlyssa Gardner has been down the rabbit hole and faced the bandersnatch. She saved the life of Jeb, the guy she loves, and escaped the machinations of the disturbingly seductive Morpheus and the vindictive Queen Red. Now all she has to do is graduate high school and make it through prom so she can attend the prestigious art school in London she's always dreamed of. That would be easier without

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

Entwined

Heather Dixon

Azalea is trapped. Just when she should feel that everything is before her . . . beautiful gowns, dashing suitors, balls filled with dancing . . . it's taken away. All of it. The Keeper understands. He's trapped, too, held for centuries within the walls of the palace. And so he extends an invitation. Every night, Azalea and her eleven sisters may step through the enchanted passage in their r

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

Book of a Thousand Days

Shannon Hale · 320 pages

Fifteen-year-old Dashti, sworn to obey her sixteen-year-old mistress, the Lady Saren, shares Saren's years of punishment locked in a tower, then brings her safely to the lands of her true love, where both must hide who they are as they work as kitchen maids.

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

Once Upon a Dream

Liz Braswell · 448 pages

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead
🙂

To Kill a Kingdom

Alexandra Christo · 344 pages

Fairy Tale RetellingYoung AdultFantasyFemale Lead

In the works

To be read SpinnerCan’t pick your next book? Spin your Want to read.Blind date with a bookPick a mood, unwrap a surprise.Add a tiny librarySnap a little free library and its books.