Fairy Tale Retelling Books in Order

The Fairy Tale Retelling books are not straight remakes of one famous story at a time. Scarlett St Clair has said this world pulls from Grimm, Hans Christian Andersen, and a few Irish fairy tales, then reshapes those pieces into something new. That gives the series a familiar fairy-tale texture, curses, bargains, true names, wicked families, enchanted places, but the plots do not move like simple retreads.

Mountains Made of Glass is the first clear example. Gesela lives in the village of Elk, where curse after curse has shaped daily life. When the town's well goes dry, it becomes her job to break the next spell by killing the creature at the bottom. The problem is that the creature is not a toad at all, but an elven prince under enchantment. From there, the story turns into a tangle of punishment, attraction, and a seven-day bargain with a beautiful beast whose true name matters more than brute strength.

Curses stack on curses here.

Apples Dipped in Gold shifts to Samara, an orphan trapped with cruel brothers who see her as something to trade away. She thinks a prince's marriage offer might be her escape, only to have that journey interrupted by Lore, the Prince of Nightshade. Lore is dangerous, gifted with poison magic, and very much not a random captor. His obsession with Samara gives the second book a different romantic texture, but it still runs on the same fairy-tale logic of danger, debt, and desire.

That shared logic is what links the series. Names have power. Love can break enchantment, but only after fear, sacrifice, and trust are tested. Family curses do real damage, and every bargain comes with a catch. The books stay romantic, but they also remember that old fairy tales were often strange, dark, and a little cruel.

Another thread running through the series is the idea of the seven brothers. Even in the first books, sibling ties and old magical consequences shape the world around the heroines. The men may arrive as beasts, princes, or threats, but the stories are not about helpless women waiting to be chosen. Gesela and Samara both have to act, decide, and survive the costs of their choices.

So if you want fantasy romance with forests, curses, poison, beasts, and fairy-tale rules that bite back, this is a good place to start. The stories are shorter than a giant epic, but they still carry that dark, enchanted feeling that makes old tales linger.