5 Beauty and the Beast Retellings We’re Adding to Our Floor-to-Ceiling Library

Beauty, by Robin McKinley
Beauty has a loving father and two sisters she’ll do anything to protect, even if it means going directly into the lair of a beast…but perhaps that beast isn’t so beastly after all. This is a fairly straightforward retelling, but McKinley’s lucid prose and intelligent Beauty—and the attention she gives to building Beauty’s home life before she ever meets the Beast—make it well worth falling in love with. Read it first, before moving on to more-skewed tellings.

Cruel Beauty, by Rosamund Hodge
In this sexy, twisted tale, the Beast is the Gentle Lord, a demon who controls the forces of darkness and makes bargains with foolish villagers in a town that’s been cut off from the rest of the world by mysterious means. Our Belle is Nyx, a young girl promised to the Beast in marriage at her birth, who has spent 17 years training as his assassin. This Beauty and her Beast are far more feisty than most—for one thing, they’re constantly trying to judge whether the other is trying to kill them—and Hodge builds a dark, incredibly inventive tale on a familiar base.

Beastly, by Alex Flinn
Kyle Kingsbury is not a nice guy. In fact, he’s such a conceited jerk that a witch at his high school turns him into a beast, giving him two years to find true love before he becomes a beast forever. When a robber breaks into his apartment, Kyle promises not to tell the police…so long as the robber gives him his daughter, fellow high school student Lindy. You probably know where this is going, and rest assured: it’s great fun to read a modern B&B as told by the Beast.

Beastkeeper, by Cat Hellisen
I love, love, LOVE when authors retell stories and throw some gender-swapping into the mix. In this contemporary telling that straddles a real and a fairy-tale world, grade-schooler Sarah’s mother leaves her family late one night. Over the following weeks, Sarah watches as her father’s behavior slowly become more and more beastly. And when he abruptly abandons her at his parents’ home, a decrepit castle deep within a forest, she comes to realize that she, too, may make a beastly transformation—and learns that true love could doom her as easily as it might save her. A B&B retelling with a female Beast that’s definitely worth a read!

Of Beast and Beauty, by Stacey Jay
Isra is a princess who will soon be sacrificed to keep her people safe from the Monstrous, led by mutant beast Gem. But when Isra captures Gem trying to steal from her, the two begin to care for each other, and Isra begins to question the people she was sworn to protect. A dark retelling that puts more at stake than the original and gives the Belle character a bit more to do than read (not that reading isn’t important!).