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Recommendation RequestFantasy/fairy tale/folklore with some romance recommendations?
Posted October 29, 2023 by AadirMorgendorfer in Books

Can anyone recommend any? I don't really want romance to be the whole plot, just a nice side hustle.

So far, I've enjoyed:

Katherine Arden (Winternight)

Naomi Novik (Spinning Silver, Uprooted)

Robin Mckinley

Sharon Shinn (thanks to whoever recommended her on another thread here; she's wonderful)

Juliet Marillier

Kate Elliott's Cold Magic series (though she's properly on the TRA train now, I think)

Holly Black (Cruel Prince series)

Heather Fawcett (Encyclopedia of Fairies)

Just to make this more niche, I don't tend to read men.

17 comments

kfaythe87November 6, 2023

Have you read the lesbian retellings of fairytales by Emma Donoghue? I think the collection is called "Kissing the Witch"

DiamondFallsOctober 31, 2023

Waking Beauty by Dawn K. Lake
Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones

beldin0October 29, 2023

Strongly recommend the various series by Robin Hobb - it starts with Assassins Apprentice but if you prefer female protagonists there's no reason you couldn't go straight to the Liveship Traders series (although it is set later, there are really 2 intertwined storylines that you could read out of order)

IronicWolfOctober 29, 2023

Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell by Susannah Clarke. No romance though.

WhichWitchAmIOctober 30, 2023

An incredible book!

yaelOctober 30, 2023

Thistlefoot by GennaRose Nethercott. I love everything I’ve seen from her, but this is her first novel. I went to a bookstore reading and she performed an excerpt as a one-woman puppet show. I am not a folklorish person and I was completely captivated and moved by it.

WhichWitchAmIOctober 30, 2023

Patricia McKillip’s works are amazing

heartwitchOctober 30, 2023

You might like Pamela Dean's Tam Lin. While superficially a romance, it's more of a love song to college life.

wittysheepOctober 29, 2023(Edited October 29, 2023)

A couple of recommendations:

-- The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

-- Sorcery of Thorns by Margaret Rogerson

And I second the Scholomance trilogy recommendation

MatchaMeercatOctober 29, 2023

Another vote for Night Circus. Morgenstern’s writing is so vivid and she draws the reader into the world.

whatisreal999October 29, 2023

The Change by Kristen Miller had some fantasy elements and was quite satisfying...

NewteftOctober 29, 2023

I've recently listened to the audiobooks of these two books by A G Slatter:

All the Murmuring Bones, which is a story about a young woman (Mirin) from once great family now desolate. The family has ties with the sea and once paid their debts to it, but are no longer able to fulfil those debts. I don't know how much to say without spoiling too much, but Mirin ends up leaving her ancestral home and setting off to find out some hidden truths. The book features a lot of creatures and lots of little snippets of world building through stories told within the story which I liked.

A Path of Thorns - which is about another young woman (Asher) who is starting work as a governess for a family on an isolated estate. I really don't know how to not spoil this book, but it is very witchy and has in my mind much more romance than the first!

AgronaOctober 29, 2023

Garth Nix but not Angel Mage. Dianna Wynn’s Jones.

WomanwithopinionsOctober 29, 2023

If you're into urban fantasy, anything from Patricia Briggs. I'm a fan of her Mercy Thompson series. The romance is there but never heavy or too graphic. The downside is that (in my opinion) Native Americans are kind of used for 'spice.' Mercy is a mixed-race character who is half Native. The writer is not Native, needless to say.

You could try another urban fantasy series, the "Magic" series by Ilona Andrews, a wife-and-husband team.

I'd also recommend "The Hazel Wood," by Melissa Albert, but there's not really much romance in that. There's a fleeting hint of it but it doesn't go anywhere and the couple don't end up together.

There are several urban fantasy series-with-light-romance options by Kelley Armstrong. But I had to stop reading her "Cowansville" series, it was just a bit too ugh for me. The protagonist gets torn between a man with fae blood and a werewolf part of a biker gang. And of course the biker gang guy sleeps with and uses desperate, sad women who prostitute and have no self-esteem and live on the margins of the clubhouse. And of course once he finds the protagonist, he's done with the trash. And of course, the trash woman gets jealous has to be shown her comeuppance and I was just like... I'm not so down with this author anymore or these characters. But her Women of the Otherworld series was awesome.

The novel "Affinity," by Sarah Waters is set around a women's jail in Victorian-era London. Ghosts may be involved. I don't know if there's romance but there just may be something transpiring if you're into lesbian romance. Waters wrote the lesbian, Victorian-era themed book, "Tipping the Velvet," which became a cult classic film.

LilacSandwichOctober 29, 2023

Have you tried T. Kingfisher? Two recent titles are 'A House with Good Bones', horror fantasy about a controlling and dead grandmother, and 'Nettle and Bone' about a group of women and a token dude breaking someone out of an abusive marriage. In many of her books the plot is more of the side hustle to the romance, but in these two it's more understated.

And if you enjoyed Spinning Silver and Uprooted, the Scholomance trilogy, about going to a terrible boarding school full of monsters including and especially the protagonist, is now complete and finished off beautifully.

AadirMorgendorfer [OP]October 30, 2023

Thanks so much for all the recommendations. Loads of great sounding stuff. I'm off to check them out on Audible.

[Deleted]October 29, 2023