YA Books to Read if You Like Dark Fairy Tales

If you like your fairy tales filled with menace and danger, definitely check out this list of YA Books to Read if You Like Dark Fairy Tales!

I think the Disney-fication of fairy tales has obscured the fact that many traditional fairy tales (including European tales like Grimm’s and Hans Christian Anderson’s, or Middle Eastern stories like One Thousand and One Nights) had some pretty grim and dark elements. So, if you like your fairy tales on the darker and more sinister side, what are some YA books you should read?

Here are some suggestions. Please leave your own in the comments!

YA Books for People Who Love Dark Fairy Tales

The Mirror Season by Anna-Marie McLemore. Graciela whole world changes after she and a boy she barely knows are assaulted at the same party. She loses her gifts, neighborhood trees vanish overnight, and mirrored glass appears, bringing reckless magic with it. This queer fairy tale incorporates magical realism with elements of the Snow Queen.

Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust. Blending the stories of Sleeping Beauty and Rappaccini’s Daughter with Persian epic, this book spins a tale about a princess whose very touch is poisonous, a kingdom with a hidden past, and a complex cast of characters all with their own agendas.

The Cruel Prince by Holly Black. After the murder of her parents, a mortal girl finds herself caught in a dark web of faerie intrigue.

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh. Every dawn brings horror to a different family in a land ruled by a killer. Khalid, the eighteen-year-old Caliph of Khorasan, takes a new bride each night only to have her executed at sunrise.

Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge. Betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom, Nyx has always known that her fate was to marry him, kill him, and free her people from his tyranny. A dark Beauty and the Beast retelling.

Sisters Red by Jackson Pearce. Scarlett March lives to hunt the Fenris–the werewolves that took her eye when she was defending her sister Rosie from a brutal attack. Based on Little Red Riding Hood.

Dark and Deepest Red by Anna-Marie McLemore. 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. Based on The Red Shoes.

House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin Craig. As one by one her beautiful sisters mysteriously die on their isolated island estate, Annaleigh must unravel the curse that haunts her family. Be careful who you dance with. A fairy tale murder mystery based on the Twelve Dancing Princesses.

Damsel by Elana Arnold. When the king dies, his son the prince must venture out into the gray lands, slay a fierce dragon, and rescue a damsel to be his bride. When Ama wakes in the arms of Prince Emory, she knows none of this. She has no memory of what came before she was captured by the dragon or what horrors she faced in its lair. The prince seems to have rescued her, but she’s not out of danger at all.

Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore. The del Cisne girls have never just been sisters; they’re also rivals, Blanca is as obedient and graceful as Roja is vicious and manipulative. Because of a generations-old spell, their family is bound to a bevy of swans deep in the woods. One day, the swans will pull them into a dangerous game that will leave one of them a girl, and trap the other in the body of a swan. Based on Swan Lake.

Red Hood by Elana K. Arnold. A dark, engrossing, blood-drenched tale of the familiar threats to female power—and one girl’s journey to regain it. Based on Little Red Riding Hood.

Have you read any of these? Have any to recommend? Talk to me in comments!