There is nothing, I think, quite like a book that reads like a dark fairytale. A book that brings to mind those childhood stories, Hans Christian Andersen or the Brothers Grimm, that both horrifies and enthralls with its telling. A book that haunts even after you’ve turned the final page, that makes you miss the sense of both whimsy and terror that its prose managed to evoke. A book that digs into desperately human themes, dealing with subjects like grief or trauma or complex family dynamics, subjects that feel raw, visceral, no matter how impossible the setting. If you’re anything like me, this is what you reach for on rainy days, at times where you just want to sit with a story and let it wrap around you, immerse you into its depths.
Here are five books that capture this specific feeling, perfect for the next time you want to not only read a book, but live inside of it for a little while.
Last Tale of the Flower Bride by Roshani Chokshi
A haunting, lyrical book that is all luxurious mystery and slowly creeping darkness, it deals with themes of identity and storytelling and how they become tangled in one another. Drawing on classic fairytales like Bluebeard and Catskins, the novel is told in two timelines—one tale of sisterhood, and the other of grief, as the main character Indigo is faced with her past during a return to her childhood home, the House of Dreams. It’s best to go into this one knowing as little as possible about the plot, and let it sweep you away. It is very much for the lovers of prose—it will keep you on the edge of your seat, but also have you reveling in every beautiful setting and haunting paragraph.
The Spear Cuts Through Water by Simon Jimenez
Beautiful and heart-wrenching in equal measures, The Spear Cuts Through Water is an ode to oral storytelling, recounting the story of two young men as they ferry an ancient moon goddess across a fantastical land. Like Last Tale, this one is best to go into blind. It will be confusing at first, but that’s because this is a book that asks the reader to trust—to be patient with the narrator as the story unfolds, first mystifying but enthralling, then breathtaking and frightening in equal turns. It’s a dark story to be sure, not for the faint of heart, but those who bear with it are rewarded with one of the most emotional and gripping finales in literature, and characters that will stay with them long after the book is done.
Gentlest of Wild Things by Sarah Underwood
The tale of Eros and Psyche is reimagined in this poetic novel, with a slow-burn sapphic romance at its heart. The atmosphere here is oppressive, almost Gothic, as Eirene strikes a deal with the menacing Leandros for her sister Phoebe and is whisked away to his tower, where she begins to unravel the truth behind his potions of Desire. She also meets his daughter Lamia, who hides secrets of her own. Trials and tests are a staple of many fairytales, and Wild Things puts a Greek mythology spin on them, having Eirene scale treacherous cliffs and journey into Hades itself in order to save her sister… and the strange girl she may be falling for.
Dark Rise by C. S. Pacat
What is more fairytale than gallant knights defending the world from darkness? Dark Rise takes the classic tropes of good vs. evil, hero vs. villain, and turns them on their head. It forces you to question everything—and everyone—as Will is recruited into the Knights Radiant and fights to protect his friends while questioning his own identity and beliefs. Its moody 19th century London setting makes it a perfect rainy day read, and Will and James’ very, very slow-burn romance is as heart wrenching as it is satisfying. There’s a twist at the end of this book that had me gasping out loud, and I promise the second book is even better. If you’re in the mood for a quick, bingeable read that doesn’t compromise atmosphere for readability, this is the one!
Curious Tides by Pascale Lacelle
Curious Tides is a novel that puts a fantasy spin on the classic dark academia setting. Set at the mesmerizing Aldryn College for Lunar Magic, the novel follows Emory as she returns to school after a near-death experience in the school’s ocean caves—an experience that cost the life of her best friend. Filled with gloomy ocean vistas, ancient, magical halls, and memorable characters (Kai, my beloved!), it feels like a warm blanket on a cold day. Like several other books on this list, one of the novel’s themes is storytelling—an ancient storybook known as Song of the Drowned Gods is woven through the narrative, unravelling along with the main mystery plot line. It’s this part of the book that gives it the perfect dark fairytale feel, along with the magic system based on the phases of the moon and the danger lurking in the background, getting closer and closer with every page…
Buy the Book
A Treachery of Swans
Half way through the Dark Rise audiobook! The narrator is superb and the book had been SO GOOD
i would like to add Vita Nostra by Marina Dyachenko
From Goodreads :
Our life is brief . . .
Sasha Samokhina has been accepted to the Institute of Special Technologies.
Or, more precisely, she’s been chosen.
Situated in a tiny village, she finds the students are bizarre, and the curriculum even more so. The books are impossible to read, the lessons obscure to the point of maddening, and the work refuses memorization. Using terror and coercion to keep the students in line, the school does not punish them for their transgressions and failures; instead, it is their families that pay a terrible price. Yet despite her fear, Sasha undergoes changes that defy the dictates of matter and time; experiences which are nothing she has ever dreamed of . . . and suddenly all she could ever want.
A complex blend of adventure, magic, science, and philosophy that probes the mysteries of existence, filtered through a distinct Russian sensibility, this astonishing work of speculative fiction—brilliantly translated by Julia Meitov Hersey—is reminiscent of modern classics such as Lev Grossman’s The Magicians, Max Barry’s Lexicon, and Katherine Arden’s The Bear and the Nightingale, but will transport them to a place far beyond those fantastical worlds.