I’ve always loved retellings of all kinds, but my favorites subvert expectations, and I believe queer retellings provide the richest opportunities for subversion. In my own writing, I try to balance honoring the source material while also providing new perspectives, and nothing helps me achieve that more than reading widely. Retellings were also the subject of my master's critical thesis for Hamline University’s writing for children and young adults program.
To me, what’s most striking about this book, a queer retelling of “Snow White,” is that in addition to the POV of the Snow White character, Lynet, there’s also narration from Mina, the Evil Queen insert. Only in this retelling Mina isn’t a superficial villain.
In fact, she’s no villain at all. I find her to be a complex heroine, and her relationship with Lynet is equally rich and complicated. I was compelled by Lynet and Mina’s struggles under the weight of feminine and royal expectations. Despite their conflicts, they are more alike than they are different, and their journey to realizing this was so satisfying.
The sapphic romance between Lynet and a surgeon provides a lovely subplot that adds to, rather than distracts from, the main storyline. One of my all-time favorite sapphic retellings.
At sixteen, Mina's mother is dead, her magician father is vicious, and her silent heart has never beat with love for anyone-has never beat at all, in fact, but she'd always thought that fact normal. She never guessed that her father cut out her heart and replaced it with one of glass. When she moves to Whitespring Castle and sees its king for the first time, Mina forms a plan: win the king's heart with her beauty, become queen, and finally know love. The only catch is that she'll have to become a stepmother.
No novelization of “The Goblin Market,” a poem by Christina Rosetti, has convinced me of the market’s allure like Not Good for Maidens. Lou, the novel’s main character, reflected my feelings in the beginning of the story, expressing confusion as to why anyone would enter the market knowing its horrors.
But as the past timeline of the novel developed, in which Lou’s Aunt May visited the market and began an unexpected sapphic romance, and as Lou had her own experiences related to the market in the present timeline, it was easier to understand why someone would be tempted.
In their respective timelines, Lou and May search for themselves, desperate to forge identities unbound by family and duty. The market, in a way, grants them unique paths toward freedom, and I found that to be a compelling take on a classic I was never enchanted by before. Bovalino’s prose, illuminating both the grotesque and the dazzling, also captivated me throughout.
This book, a retelling of “Cinderella,” is widely considered to be a foundational queer retelling, and I wholeheartedly agree with that assessment.
It was the first queer retelling I ever read and continues to be a favorite. It inspired me to write my own queer retellings and is a fine example of a novel that didn’t need sweeping battles and world-ending threats to be compelling.
I found Ash’s journey through grief and her path to love to be strong in their own ways. Quietly powerful stories like Ash are what I most enjoy, though they are a rarity, especially in YA, where things tend to be very high stakes.
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What is this book about?
The haunting, romantic lesbian retelling of Cinderella and modern queer classic by award-winning author Malinda Lo -- now with an introduction by Holly Black, a letter from the author, a Q&A, and more!
In the wake of her father's death, Ash is left at the mercy of her cruel stepmother. Consumed with grief, her only joy comes by the light of the dying hearth fire, rereading the fairy tales her mother once told her. In her dreams, someday the fairies will steal her away. When she meets the dark and dangerous fairy Sidhean, she believes that her wish may be…
What I loved most about Ferraro’s retelling of The Mysteries of Udolpho was his unique take on the classic YA love triangle. Not only does this love triangle stand out because it’s queer (all three characters involved are young men), but because it wasn’t obvious to me from the beginning how the love triangle would resolve. Typically, in love triangle stories, I can tell who the character – and thus the author – prefers. I’m pretty confident about who is going to win out in the end.
But Ferraro took his time developing each love interest, and his main character’s struggle to pick one over the other is palpable and well-written. I was left guessing until the very end, and the way the love triangle resolved was both surprising and satisfying.
In this queer gothic romance, a young marquis caught between freedom and passion, honor and love will have to unravel a centuries-old curse to find his own happy ending.
Trapped in a world of straight expectations, queer marquis Emile longs for independence. So, when his aunt declares he must marry to produce an heir or be disowned, he runs away disguised as a servant until he can come of age and reclaim his inheritance.
All Emile needs to do is keep his head down and bide his time, but he quickly stumbles into a mystery beyond his imagination. While working…
I loved McLemore’s retelling of “The Red Shoes” because the novel felt uniquely historical and modern due to its dual timelines, with one storyline in 1518 and the other five centuries later. Despite being so far apart, the timelines were connected by the intriguing mystery of a dancing fever.
Another element I loved is that the 1518 timeline featured a queer romance with a trans character, which you don’t see often, even in queer retellings, and added another layer of richness to the story.
I’m a fan of everything McLemore writes because of their lush prose and compelling characters, but this one remains my favorite of theirs.
With Anna-Marie McLemore's signature lush prose, Dark and Deepest Red pairs the forbidding magic of a fairy tale with a modern story of passion and betrayal.
Summer, 1518. A strange sickness sweeps through Strasbourg: women dance in the streets, some until they fall down dead. As rumors of witchcraft spread, suspicion turns toward Lavinia and her family, and Lavinia may have to do the unimaginable to save herself and everyone she loves.
Five centuries later, a pair of red shoes seal to Rosella Oliva’s feet, making her dance uncontrollably. They draw her toward a boy who knows the dancing fever’s…
A sapphic twist on the classic fairy tale "Snow White and Rose Red” in which solitary forager Ro saves a fox from an attacking bear only to witness the bear transform into a boy after her sister shoots him with an arrow. When the boy wakes, he has no memory of who he is—all he knows is Ro’s name and that he has to kill the fox.
Ro never believed in the faeries from her father’s stories, but she can’t deny that the boy and the fox are victims of a faerie curse. She’ll have to remember everything her father taught her to extract herself from this deadly game and keep her precious fox out of harm’s way.
ThePianist's Only Daughter is a frank, humorous, and heartbreaking exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her mother, an English scholar and poet, and her father, a pianist and music professor. Their vivid emotional lives, marital instability, and eventual divorce provided the backdrop for her 1960s and ‘70s Midwestern youth.
Nearly thirty years after they divorce, Adams' newly single father flies in to woo his ex-wife, now retired and diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Their daughter watches in disbelief…
Grounded in insights about mental health, health and aging, The Pianist’s Only Daughter: A Memoir presents a frank and loving exploration of aging in an aging expert's own family.
Social worker and gerontologist Kathryn Betts Adams spent decades negotiating evolving family dynamics with her colorful and talented parents: her English scholar and poet mother and her pianist father. Their vivid emotional lives, marital instability, and eventual divorce provided the backdrop for her 1960s and ‘70s Midwestern youth.
Nearly thirty years after they divorce, Adams' father finds himself single and flies in to woo his ex-wife, now retired and diagnosed with…
