100 Books Like Dark and Deepest Red

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.

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.

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. 

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… show more.

Anna-Marie McLemore’s prose is so poetic and elegant that I sometimes reread sentences just because they have such a beautiful cadence to them.

This book is a reimagining of “Snow White and Rose-Red” with elements of Swan Lake and Latinx folklore.

Everything McLemore writes is magic, but this story weaves together everything I love about their work: magical realism, velvety descriptions, and fairy tales cracked open in new ways to shed light on racial and gender politics.

I love the complicated, loving relationship between the two sisters, and I love that the boy Blanca falls in love with has a complicated relationship with gender that is in part inspired by McLemore’s transgender and non-binary husband.

Have you ever felt like you wished the books you read in middle school were more, well, brown? I know I did!

Well, Witchlings takes place in a world full of witches! No, seriously, the entire town - and surrounding towns - are all made up of covens of witches. For Seven Salazar, her whole life has been leading up to the moment where she gets sorted into her forever coven.

However, when the time comes, the worst thing possible happens - she becomes a “spare,” a witch not sorted into a coven! This leads her, along with the other two spares, on a path of redemption and discovery. Don’t let the fact that this is a middle grade novel fool you - this book is a delight for all ages!

Mya Spalter is a New York witch who learned the ropes by way of her ancestors as well as the Enchantments occult shop. Learning from both guides and NYC witches, I love the way this book shows how Spalter’s magic was conjured by personal connections to survival and home.

Gaining knowledge on both our magic and ancestral practices can be a difficult journey for queer folks, navigating the ultra-conservative laws of mainstream spirituality. However, magic is not conservative nor heterosexual—it is universal and a tool we can all access. This book showed me the divine connections between Wiccan history, self-care, and surviving as a queer person of Color in America.

I started this book on a plane, continued to read in my seat after the plane landed, and was seriously annoyed at the flight attendant when forced to deplane. This is one of those books with a simple twist on the fantasy genre I wish I’d thought of—a race of beings who subsist on eating books.

Dean’s world building is superb, the protagonist is a badass, and the portrayal of the fractured relationships among characters—especially with her son—complicated and relatable. I finished it (in a chair at the airport) in one sitting, and it was worth it. 

Fairy-tale retellings are my favorite subgenre, and this book hit every right note for me. I loved the incorporation of stories, known and unknown to me, with art so beautiful there are days I pick this book up just to marvel at it.

The last one brought tears to my eyes, a feat that doesn’t happen often, superseded only by the end of the novel. I cannot recommend it enough.    

Look, if this book had been around when I was in middle school, it would have been a game changer (pun absolutely intended). This book has it all: lesbian-enemies-to-the-middle-school-equivalent-of-lovers, heart-pounding descriptions of soccer, complex family dynamics, and fraught friendships! Yes, all of those trope-y pieces might feel like a delightful, frothy treat, but this book packs a real emotional punch.

The dual point-of-view gives readers the chance to understand the complex relationship between Mel and Tory—and fall in love with both characters! Becker also sprinkles in some great conversations about self-expression. Beware: this is a read-in-one-sitting kind of book!