YA Classic Retellings

YA adaptations or stories inspired from classic tales including fairy tales, fables, and classical literature. Not a complete or exhaustive list. *The Young Adult Collection is made up of books for a wide age range (12-18 years old) and includes a variety of different topics and interests. Not all titles will be appropriate for all readers.*

Showing 1 - 20 of 33  There are a total of 198 valid entries on the list.
Book cover for "Alice in zombieland"
Star rating for Alice in zombieland
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
After everything she knows and loves is taken from her, Alice Bell must avenge her family by learning to fight the undead and to trust bad boy Cole Holland.
Book cover for "Bookish boyfriends"
Star rating for Bookish boyfriends
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Merrilee Campbell, 16, thinks boys are better in books, chivalry is dead, and there'd be nothing more romantic than having just one guy woo her like the heroes in classic stories. She's about to get the chance to test these daydreams when she, her best friend, Eliza, and her younger sister, Rory, transfer into Reginald R. Hero High, where all their fantasies come true--often with surprising consequences.
Book cover for "Briar girls"
Star rating for Briar girls
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Lena has a secret: the touch of her skin can kill...But after a devastating mistake, she and her father are forced to flee to a village near the Silence, a mysterious forest with a reputation for luring people into the trees, never to be seen again...Until the night an enigmatic girl stumbles out of the Silence...Miranda...is on a quest to wake a sleeping princess believed to hold the key to liberating the Gather from its tyrannical ruler and she...

4. Damsel

Book cover for "Damsel"
Star rating for Damsel
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
Waking up in the arms of Prince Emory, Ama has no memory of him rescuing her from a dragon's lair, but she soon discovers there is more to the legend of dragons and damsels than anyone knows and she is still in great danger.
Book cover for "Daughter of Sparta"
Star rating for Daughter of Sparta
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Guided by the handsome Apollo, Daphne journeys across ancient Greece to recover nine mysterious items stolen from Mount Olympus before the gods lose their powers and throw the mortal world into chaos in this reinterpretation of the Greek myth.
Book cover for "Dreamless"
Star rating for Dreamless
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
With help from her new friend Orion, seventeen-year-old Helen Hamilton descends into the Underworld in search of a way to break the Furies' blood curse and prevent the start of another Trojan War.
Book cover for "Epically earnest"
Star rating for Epically earnest
Author:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Jane Worthing's claim to fame is that she was one of the first viral internet sensations...discovered as a one-year-old in an oversized Gucci bag by her adopted father in a Poughkeepsie train station. Now in her senior year of high school, Janey is questioning whether she wants to look for her bio family due to a loving, but deeply misguided push from her best friend Algie, while also navigating an all-consuming crush on his cousin, the beautiful,...
Book cover for "Everneath"
Star rating for Everneath
Series:
Everneath novels volume 0001
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:

Last spring, Nikki Beckett vanished, sucked into an underworld known as the Everneath. Now she's returned—to her old life, her family, her boyfriend—before she's banished back to the underworld . . . this time forever. She has six months before the Everneath comes to claim her, six months for good-byes she can't find the words for, six months to find redemption, if it exists.

Nikki longs to spend these precious months forgetting

...
Book cover for "Flame in the mist"
Star rating for Flame in the mist
Series:
Average Rating:
4.9 stars
Description:
The daughter of a prominent samurai, Mariko is targeted by bandits who wish to stop her arranged marriage, a situation that compels her to infiltrate the gang, disguised as a boy, to track down the person responsible for the target on her back

10. Fresh

Book cover for "Fresh"
Star rating for Fresh
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Elliot McHugh enters her first year of college not knowing what to expect but after parties, new friends, and tough tests she begins to learn a lot about herself and what is important.
Book cover for "Golden boys"
Star rating for Golden boys
Series:
Golden boys volume 1.
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Gabriel, Reese, Sal, and Heath are best friends, bonded in their small rural town by their queerness, their good grades, and their big dreams. They are about to embark on the summer before senior year of high school, where each is going on a new, big adventure, from attending a design school in Paris to interning on Capitol Hill for a U.S. Senator. What will this summer of new experiences and world-expanding travel mean for each of them--and for...
Book cover for "The goose girl"
Star rating for The goose girl
Series:
Books of Bayern volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
On her way to marry a prince she's never met, Princess Anidori is betrayed by her guards and her lady-in-waiting and must become a goose girl to survive until she can reveal her true identity and reclaim the crown that is rightfully hers.
Book cover for "The healer's apprentice"
Star rating for The healer's apprentice
Series:
Hagenheim volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
In this story loosely based on the Sleeping Beauty fairy tale, seventeen-year-old Rose, a healer's apprentice, falls in love with the betrothed Lord Hamlin, who is seeking the sorcerer who cursed his future bride.
Book cover for "Heart of the impaler"
Star rating for Heart of the impaler
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
Beneath the shadow of impending war in fifteenth-century Wallachia, Ilona Csáki is betrothed to Prince Mircea, as her feelings blossom for her fiance's cousin Andrei and younger brother Vlad Dracula.
Book cover for "Lakesedge"
Star rating for Lakesedge
Series:
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"When Violeta Graceling and her younger brother Arien arrive at the haunted Lakesedge estate, they expect to find a monster. Leta knows the terrifying rumors about Rowan Sylvanan, who drowned his entire family when he was a boy. But neither the estate nor the monster are what they seem. As Leta falls for Rowan, she discovers he is bound to the Lord Under, the sinister death god lurking in the black waters of the lake. A creature to whom Leta is inexplicably...
Book cover for "The Last Best Kiss"
Star rating for The Last Best Kiss
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:

Jane Austen comes to modern-day Los Angeles in Claire LaZebnik's imaginative take on Persuasion, where seventeen-year-old Anna Eliot finds out whether there's such a thing as a second chance when it comes to first love. Fans of Polly Shulman, Maureen Johnson, Elizabeth Eulberg, Stephanie Perkins, and, of course, Jane Austen will love this irresistibly funny and romantic contemporary tale.

Anna is tired of worrying about what other people

...
Book cover for "The lost hero"
Star rating for The lost hero
Series:
Average Rating:
4.8 stars
Description:
Jason, Piper, and Leo, three students from a school for "bad kids," find themselves at Camp Half-Blood, where they learn that they are demigods and begin a quest to free Hera, who has been imprisoned by Mother Earth herself.
Book cover for "Mechanica"
Star rating for Mechanica
Series:
Mechanica volume 1.
Average Rating:
4.9 stars
Description:
"A retelling of Cinderella about an indomitable inventor-mechanic who finds her prince but realizes she doesn't want a fairy tale happy ending after all"--
Book cover for "Never look back"
Star rating for Never look back
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
A modern retelling of the myth, Orpheus and Eurydice, in which Eury leaves Puerto Rico for the Bronx, haunted by losing all to Hurricane Maria and by evil spirit Ato, and meets a bachata-singing charmer, Pheus.
Book cover for "Night Spinner"
Star rating for Night Spinner
Series:
Night spinner volume 1.
Average Rating:
5 stars
Description:
"Before the massacre at Nariin, Enebish was one of the greatest warriors in the Sky King's Imperial Army: a rare and dangerous Night Spinner, blessed with the ability to control the threads of darkness. Now, she is known as Enebish the Destroyer--a monster and murderer, banished to a monastery for losing control of her power and annihilating a merchant caravan. Guilt stricken and scarred, Enebish tries to be grateful for her sanctuary, until her adoptive...