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Books like A Curse So Dark and Lonely

Brigid Kemmerer · 2019 · US · fantasy · young adult
Book 1 of 3 in Cursebreakers
★ 3.95 Goodreads · 184,413 ratings

Harper, a girl from Washington with cerebral palsy, is snatched into the kingdom of Emberfall, where Prince Rhen has relived the same autumn for centuries under a curse that only a girl's love can break.

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12 books for readers of A Curse So Dark and Lonely

Beauty

Robin McKinley · 1978 · US 96% match ★ 4.05 Goodreads · 83,886 ratings
shares: castle, monstrous, retelling · earnest, easy read

Beauty, the plain, bookish youngest daughter of a ruined merchant, goes to live in the Beast's enchanted castle to save her father.

The Iron King

Julie Kagawa · 2010 · US 96% match ★ 3.87 Goodreads · 219,732 ratings
Book 1 of 4 in The Iron Fey
shares: portal fantasy, fairytale, young adult, portal · easy read, earnest

Just as she turns sixteen, Meghan Chase learns that her little brother has been taken and replaced with a changeling, and that she is the half-human daughter of a faery king, and she follows her best friend Robbie into the Nevernever to bring him home.

Beastly

Alex Flinn · 2007 · US 96% match ★ 3.82 Goodreads · 178,849 ratings
shares: monstrous, retelling, fairytale · easy read, earnest

Kyle Kingsbury, the arrogant, handsome son of a New York news anchor, humiliates a girl at school who turns out to be a witch, and she turns him into a beast with two years to find love.

Gild

Raven Kennedy · 2020 · US 95% match ★ 3.62 Goodreads · 431,614 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in The Plated Prisoner
shares: castle, romantasy, retelling · easy read, earnest

Auren is King Midas's favoured, gold-touched by him as his possession and kept in his castle of gold in the frozen mountains of Highbell, and when war comes and a deal is struck, her faith in the man who pulled her from the slums begins to crack.

An Enchantment of Ravens

Margaret Rogerson · 2017 · US 95% match ★ 3.64 Goodreads · 111,724 ratings
shares: autumnal, romantasy, fairytale · easy read, earnest

Isobel paints portraits for the fair folk, who pay her in enchantments, and when she paints the autumn prince Rook with human sorrow in his eyes, he carries her off to stand trial at his court for the insult.

Magic Kingdom for Sale—Sold!

Terry Brooks · 1986 · US 95% match ★ 3.92 Goodreads · 40,007 ratings
Book 1 of 6 in Magic Kingdom of Landover
shares: castle, portal fantasy, portal · easy read, earnest

A grieving Chicago lawyer buys a magic kingdom from a department-store catalogue and discovers his new realm is broke, falling apart, and in need of a real king.

Heartstone

Elle Katharine White · 2016 · US 94% match ★ 3.78 Goodreads · 5,677 ratings
shares: monstrous, retelling · easy read, earnest

In a world of gryphons and dragons, Aliza Bentaine's family hires a band of monster hunters to protect their land, among them Alastair Daired, a proud dragonrider.

A Court of Thorns and Roses

Sarah J. Maas · 2015 · US 94% match ★ 4.14 Goodreads · 4,653,884 ratings
Book 1 of 5 in A Court of Thorns and Roses
shares: romantasy, retelling, fairytale · easy read, earnest

Nineteen-year-old Feyre kills a wolf to feed her starving family, and a beastlike faerie comes to claim her life in payment, carrying her across the wall to his court in Prythian, where a blight is spreading through the fae lands.

Powerless

Lauren Roberts · 2023 · US 94% match ★ 4.12 Goodreads · 1,114,598 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in Powerless
shares: romantasy, dual perspective, young adult · easy read, plain prose

In a kingdom where the gifted Elites rule and the powerless Ordinaries are hunted, a thief named Paedyn Gray hides that she has no power at all, until she saves a prince and is thrown into the deadly Purging Trials.

Ella Enchanted

Gail Carson Levine · 1997 · US 94% match ★ 4.02 Goodreads · 427,961 ratings
shares: retelling, fairytale, curse · easy read, speculative

Ella of Frell was given the gift of obedience by a foolish fairy at birth, so she must do whatever anyone tells her, and after her mother dies she sets out to break the curse, in a witty retelling of Cinderella.

The Cruel Prince

Holly Black · 2018 · US 94% match ★ 4.00 Goodreads · 1,889,283 ratings
Book 1 of 3 in The Folk of the Air
shares: romantasy, fairytale, young adult · easy read, earnest

Jude, a mortal girl brought to the High Court of Faerie as a child after her parents were murdered, wants a place among the fair folk who despise her, and to get it she must defy Prince Cardan, the cruellest of them.

Re:ZERO -Starting Life in Another World-

Tappei Nagatsuki · 2014 · Japan 94% match
shares: time loop, portal fantasy · easy read, plain prose

Subaru Natsuki, a shut-in, is suddenly summoned to a fantasy world, and finds that whenever he dies he goes back to an earlier point in time.