Hey guys, it's Kirsti. Welcome back to my channel and welcome to another
installment of Monthly Recommendations. For those of you don't know, Monthly
Recommendations is a Goodreads group that was started by Kayla Rayne and
Trina from Between Chapters. Every month, there is a theme and you recommend books
based on that theme. I will leave links, as always, to Kayla Rayne and Trina's
channels and the Goodreads group down in the description below. The theme for this
month is retellings, and I did not think I would have as many to recommend as I
do. For some reason whenever I think of retellings, I think of, like, fairytale
retellings and I'm not a big fairy tale person, as you probably know, so I did not
think I would have much to recommend. And then I was like "Oh no, wait.
Retellings of classics." So I may not have much to recommend as far as fairytale
retellings go, but I got the other shit covered. So let's start out with the
couple that I do have to recommend for, like, fairytales and folk tales and
things like that. Starting with the super duper obvious one that is going to be on,
like, everybody's list: The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer.
I love The Lunar Chronicles. They are sci-fi retellings of Cinderella, Red
Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White in that order, and they're just really
really fun. They're kind of ridiculous and silly, but they're fun as hell. So you
know if you haven't read The Lunar Chronicles yet, what are you waiting for?
Go read The Lunar Chronicles. The only other one that I have to recommend as far as, like,
fairytales and folk tales and stuff is concerned is The Wrath and the Dawn
duology by Renee Ahdieh, which is a retelling of A Thousand & One Arabian
Nights. Well, specifically, it is set in a fantasy world that is inspired by Persia
and it tells the story of this young woman named Shahrzad who volunteers
herself to marry Khalid, the boy Caliph of their particular region. And
basically every night, Khalid marries a new woman and the next morning she is
found dead. One of Shahrzad's best friends was one of the previous wives and so she
is determined that she is going to get revenge. So she volunteers to marry
Khalid and she survives that first night by telling him stories. And as time goes
by, she comes to realise that he is not quite as much of a villain as he is made
out to be. So it was just a really really good retelling of a classic folk tale,
fairytale, whatever you want to call it. I really really love this world, I love the
characters, I love how much food is in the story - every time I read this book,
it makes me super hungry. The writing is incredibly flowery,
which generally I hate but in this particular
circumstance, it just works for some reason. Next up, I have three
Shakespeare retellings to recommend, all of which are young adult books, First up,
we have As I Descended by Robin Talley, which is a retelling of Macbeth. This one
is set at a boarding school. It features a female-female romance, a male-male
romance, and protagonist with a disability. So...this one is pretty dark
and creepy at times and I just really really enjoyed it.
Next up, I have a retelling of Much Ado About Nothing, and that is The Only Thing
Worse Than Me Is You by Lily Anderson. This one is set at kind of a genius high
school and it's basically Much Ado About Nothing, but modernised and with a hell
of a lot of nerd culture in it. The author is a teen librarian and she
basically talked to, like, every kid who came in the door and was like "Hey, so tell
me about your fandoms, what do you love, what are you passionate about?" and that
is the stuff that she wove into this story. These kids love Saga and Doctor
Who and Star Wars and all manner of things, and it was just great to see how
unapologetically nerdy these characters were. It was a hell of a lot of fun, it
was really cute. Basically this book was a ton of fun and I really need to reread
it. And finally, The Steep and Thorny Way by Cat Winters, which is a retelling of
Hamlet set in 1920s... I think...Oregon, and basically the
protagonist is mixed race and it is dealing very very strongly with racial
tensions in Oregon in the 1920s. And it was confronting at times but it was so
freaking good! Like, I was not expecting a YA retelling of Hamlet set in Oregon
to be this good, but it was great. Next up, I have four books to recommend
that are retellings of classics, and the first one is kind of a general thing
that retails a bunch of different classics and that is Texts From Jane Eyre
and Other Conversations with Your Favourite Literary Characters by Melanie
Ortberg. This one is one of the gimmicky books that retells the classics in a
particular way. This one uses text messages. It's pretty much exactly what
it sounds like, and it retells a whole bunch of books from, like, classic Greek
literature through to things like Harry Potter, and it does it so incredibly well
and it is so funny. Like, I was laughing time and time
again. Particularly the Jane Eyre one, because
Rochester texts in all caps and is just
drama personified, and it is great and 100%
in character. Like, it is just on brand for pretty much every single character
in this book. It was great. Ron Weasley keeps falling for Nigerian
Prince scams, and there's just so much of this book that is really funny and
really wonderful, so definitely check this one out if you want something, like,
quick and easy, because you can pick it up and put it down and, you know, read one
classic book in, like, two minutes or whatever. The next two are kind of, like,
dubiously retellings. The first one is Every Breath by Ellie Marney, which is kind
of a Sherlock Holmes retelling that is set in Melbourne. It's essentially a YA
crime novel that follows the story of two teenagers, Rachael Watts and James Mycroft,
investigating the death of a homeless man in Royal Park, which is next to
Melbourne Zoo. It's basically them investigating
forensics-y things, so it's kind of a Sherlock Holmes retelling but it's kind
of not, because it's modernised and it's set in Melbourne and it deals with forensics-y
stuff and they're teenagers. So, like, I keep calling it a Sherlock Holmes
retelling, but I think it's safe to say that it was inspired by Sherlock Holmes
than being a strict retelling. So this one is great. Seriously, everyone should
read it. It's so so good. I love it so much, it's wonderful. The characters are
delightful, the relationship between them is gold, it's so very very Melbourne, I
love it to death. Kind of a retelling but more inspired by than anything.
Next up is my favourite book of all time ever: Jane Steele by Lyndsay Faye, which is
kind of sort of a retelling of Jane Eyre. But again, like with Every Breath, it's
more that it was inspired by Jane Eyre rather than being a strict retelling.
Jane Steele's life parallels Jane Eyre's very closely
except that Jane Steele is a murderer who doesn't stand for any bullshit and I
love her to death. This book perfectly captures the gothic feel of Jane Eyre
but without mad women locked in the attic and it's just great. I loved it so
so much. I love Jane as a character, I love her love interest as a character.
They are just perfect little cinnamon rolls who could kill you and probably
will kill you. It's fucking awesome and I love it. And the last one that is a
retelling of a classic that I would recommend is A Little in Love by Susan
Fletcher, which is a retelling of Les Miserables
from Eponine's perspective. It is a little bit bleak because, like, if
you've read Les Mis or seen Les Mis, you know how Eponine's story unfolds, you
know how atrocious her life is. And so reading it from her perspective kind of
makes it so much worse in so many ways and you know that this book is not going
to have a happy ending. But I feel like it did such a great job of fleshing out
Eponine's character and giving her so much more depth than she gets in Hugo's
original. So I couldn't help but love this book even though I knew it was
going to have a horrible, horrible ending. And finally I have seven books to
recommend that are Jane Austen retellings, because I am fucking trash
for Jane Austen retellings. Let's start with a couple of super obvious ones:
Bridget Jones and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding. If you have
read Jane Austen, you will probably know that Bridget Jones is a retelling of
Pride and Prejudice and The Edge of Reason is the retelling of Persuasion. I
love these books so much. They are quite dated now, they're set in the late 90s
so Bridget is very heavily into smoking and generally being terrible at life. Like,
she is a terrible, terrible adult which is probably why I love her so much
because I am also a terrible adult. I love The Edge of Reason a little bit
more, I think, than I love Bridget Jones' Diary just because it is a retelling of
Persuasion and I am trash for Persuasion. I know that Chelsea from
ChelseaDollingReads, like, hates this book with the fire of a thousand suns
and that makes me a little bit sad because I love this book. I love how well
it captures the feel of Persuasion and how well it modernises that. I love the
little ways that elements of the story have been woven into this modernisation.
Do not judge this book by the movie, the movie is an abomination that takes all
of the worst parts of the book and highlights them. So, like, the book - I think
at least, Chelsea would disagree - but I think the book is, like, definitely worth
reading. I love this book of a lot. I love Bridget Jones' Diary too, but I love this one more,
probably because Daniel Cleaver is in it less, and I hate Daniel Cleaver with
the fire of a thousand suns. Anyway. Do not read the third book, Mad About the Boy, it is an
abomination, it doesn't work, it's horrible, don't read that. But these two?
These two are great. The next one I want to recommend is Pride and Prejudice and
Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith. This one... do not judge this
by the movie, the movie was horrendously horrendously bad. This one is probably,
like, 60% Jane Austen, 20% zombies, 20% jokes about balls. Like, it's hilarious.
It's a little bit dated now because, like, the whole mashup thing has kind of died -
thank God because it was getting ridiculous.
But there was just something about this one - which was pretty much the first of
the classic mashups to come out - there's something about this one that just
worked so amazingly well. It's so funny, it's so ridiculous, Darcy is such a great
character in this book. Like, he just has this incredibly sarcastic sense of humour
and he makes jokes about balls all the time. So, like, Lizzy will hand him some
musket balls and he's like "No, no, Miss Bennet. My balls belong to you" and it's
just...it's fucking great. I hate zombies, I love this book.
Continuing on with the incredibly ridiculous Pride and Prejudice
retellings, I want to go with Mr. Darcy's Bite by Mary Lydon Simonsen. I love the
shit out of this book. It is completely terrible. I will admit that it is
completely terrible. It is fanfiction, the author acknowledges the fact that it is
straight-up fanfiction. It is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice in
which Mr. Darcy is a werewolf and it's fucking great. Like, it's terrible but I really
really love it. Like, an unnatural amount of love for how terrible this book is.
It's one of those books that is so bad that it comes all the way around to
being good again. So, you know, if you like werewolves and Pride and Prejudice? Check
this book out. Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld. I was hesitant going into
this book because I read Prep a million years ago and really did not like it. But
I ended up loving this book. I feel like this worked really, really well having
the Bennet sisters be older. Something about it just worked really effectively.
I really liked Lizzie as a character - the modernised version of Lizzie. I liked Jane
so much. She was really great in this book. It was just it was a little bit
long, to be honest but I still really loved the story and the way that
everything plays out and I think Lydia's story was much more effective
in this one than it often is in modern retellings. Longbourn by Jo Baker. You
guys are probably sick of me talking about this book by now but I don't care.
I'm going to talk about it again because that is how much I
loved this book. It is a retelling of Pride and Prejudice
from the perspective of the servants. So what Jo Baker did is she went through
Pride and Prejudice and every time there was a Bennet family servant on the page,
she made a note of that and those scenes - every single one of those scenes where
the servants are present - is present in Longbourn, but everything else is the
story that she has made up herself. And we still get these little snippets
of the story that we know and love but so much of the story is its own entity
and it was just so great. And, like, how often do you get historical fiction that
is told from the perspective of the lower classes?? It was just... it was so so
good, and I adored it. A relatively new addition to this is Seeking Mansfield by
Kate Watson. This one is a YA retelling of Mansfield Park.
Mansfield Park is one of my least favourite Austen books, but this
retelling worked so so well. The whole creepy cousin element is taken out of the
story because, like, he's the son of her godparents so that was really great. It
involves theatre, it's well written, it's funny,
it's feelsy, it's cute, it's basically everything you could ever want in a
young adult book but, like, with retelling elements as well. So yes. Read it. And
finally, one that I desperately need to reread but, like, after I rewatch the
entire series: The Secret Diary of Lizzie Bennet by Bernie Su, because I love the
Lizzie Bennet diaries forever and ever and ever. I still need to buy them on DVD
or, like, rewatch them on YouTube or something. But this book when I first
read it, I did not expect I would like it as much as I did because, like, I'd
literally just watch the entire series and now this book is just same things
series, but it's not. It flushes things out so much better,
Mr. and Mrs. Bennet actually get to be their own characters on the page rather
than just being the caricatures that Lizzie portrays them as and, like, I just
really loved it. It's super cute, the ending is adorable, the way that Lizzie and
Darcy are together on the page is great. I really need to reread this book, it was so good.
So there you have it, friends. That is all the retellings that I have to recommend
for you at the moment. If you have suggestions for me - are there such things
as, like, Dickens retellings? Because I would read the shit out of those - if you
have recommendations for me, let me know down in the comments. Thank you guys so
much for watching, I love all your faces and I will
see you on Monday. Bye guys.

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