Top Ten Tuesday: Top Ten Fairytale Retellings

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This week is top ten fairy tale retellings, whether you've read them or not.  Well, I bent the rules a little and actually pulled in a couple of movies.  I love, love, love retellings, though I'm rather picky about choosing ones to read or watch.  Here are my absolute favorites, in order.

10. Throne of Glass Series

I often forget that this is a bit of a retelling... really I think it's just based on an idea for a retelling.  If you hunt around Sarah J Maas' website long enough you'll find where she talks about this starting off as an idea of "what happened if Cinderella went to the ball to kill the prince".  So, yes, this is technically a retelling in my book.

9. The Bone Season

This is a beauty and the beast retelling of sorts.  I think the retelling part is pretty swamped out by everything else that happens, but regardless, this is one of my favorite books in the world.  The retelling bit was part of what got me interested in it, though.

8. Percy Jackson and the Olympians Series

So it's not a fairy tale, but I think this series does just a wonderful job of repurposing classic greek myths (which are practically fairy tales, if you ask me).

7. A Court of Thorns and Roses

This is another Beauty and the Beast retelling to make it on the list.  I recently read and loved this.  I think it does just one of the most amazing jobs retelling the story.  There are several iconic scenes from the classic Disney movie that just had me hard-core fan-girling.  Beyond that, it's a wonderful story.

6. Ella Enchanted

I feel like this is one of those books most people read when they were kids.  I have wonderful memories of staying up late and reading this with a flashlight under my covers.  It was such a wonderful story and I really need to find my copy and re-read it.

5. Starcrossed

Another not quite fairy tale, but Greek myth.  Again, I absolutely loved this book when I read it several years ago.  I keep meaning to actually buy it and then continue on with the series.  Basically, it's a sort of retelling of The Odyssey and worth the read even if you know nothing about that story.

4. Scarlet

It wouldn't be a proper retelling list without something by Marissa Meyer (spoiler alert: Cinder is number one on this list).  She's managed to write a series of incredibly amazing fairy tale retellings.  I like Scarlet a lot, though it's not my favorite in the series.  Wonderful Little Red Riding Hood retelling.

3. Shrek

Bet you didn't expect to see this on here... because it's not a book!  Well, I guess there is technically a book called Shrek that this movie was based off of (though I've not read it and have no plans to).  Not only does this allow for the many classic story book characters to fill up the side characters, but it's a backwards retelling of Beauty and the Beast.  Blew my mind when I realized that a year ago, actually.  This is one of my all time favorite movies, to be honest.  It never gets old.

2. Maleficent

I only saw this one a last month, but I absolutely fell in love with it.  I have no words to describe how wonderful it was.  If you haven't seen it, go watch it.  It's so perfect.  Perfect.

1. Cinder

This is my absolute favorite retelling for so many reasons.  I could just talk about this book forever.  Really, what makes it the best retelling, though, is how it would use things from the original tale and sometimes spin them into a surprise or sometimes stay pretty true.  If you haven't begun this series, you really should.  It blew my mind when I read it (and I had low expectations going into it) and will probably blow yours.