NOTE: This post first appeared in the Roswell Daily Record.
One trend over the past few years has been for romance authors to take a popular fairy tale and retell it with all kinds of twists and turns the original story certainly didn’t cover. Today I’m going to look at Wizard of Oz retellings, written with generous doses of romance and adventure. Most of these books I’ll mention today are the first title in a series, not surprisingly, since if an author is going to delve further into the life of the Tin Man or the Scarecrow, of course they’re going to go on to write about the other characters in the famous ensemble. (I always had something of a crush on the Scarecrow in the “Wizard of Oz” movie myself.) Let’s just say none of these books are suitable for children.
Scarecrow: Tales From Oz (Dark Fairy Tales Book One) by S. Cinders turns Oz on its head from the very beginning. As the book’s blurb warns: “Forget everything you have ever been told about Oz, Dorothy, and even her yappy dog.” In this variation, the King of Oz has four daughters and he divides his kingdom among them, giving them an opportunity to prove their abilities and possibly inherit the entire realm. The narrator is Indy, the girl who receives the East, which includes Munchkin Land. Dorothy is portrayed as a villain, Munchkins are being murdered, the Scarecrow is a very sexy guy as well as smart and there are four happy endings. This book is extremely spicy, to the point some reviewers Did Not Finish it (DNF’ed) while others literally raved about the plot and the adventure.
Rebecca F. Kenney is well versed in doing fairy tale retellings of all types, as well as other romance novels. A City of Emeralds and Envy pairs Dorothy of Oz with Alice of Wonderland (also a very popular tale for retellings but I’ll cover that another day). This is actually part of a four book series, My Wicked Darlings, focused primarily on Alice and her multiple men. It’s a Why Choose romance. The central idea is that the Fae and their kingdoms are parallel to other famous tales we know, like Wonderland and Oz, so in this book the heroines are taken by a tornado to a Faerie world for their adventures. The series is best read in order and many reviewers didn’t care for the depiction of Dorothy here, but the author adds spice and dark goings-on to her fantasy and in general the series is quite highly rated.
Tin (Faeries of Oz Book One) by Candace Robinson and Amber R. Duell also starts from the premise the Oz-dwellers are Fae. As the blurb states: “He’s a fae assassin with a heart of stone. She’s the savior of Oz. Together they must defy a heartless curse.” Dorothy here is ten years older than she was in the original OZ and since returning home to Kansas everything has fallen apart for her so she welcomes a chance to flee back to Oz. The Lion here is a villain and there are many other twists and turns to what Dorothy remembered and believed. As one reviewer said, “Not gramma’s yellow brick road.” Tin is the love interest as the book progresses and there are three other books in the series to further explore the revised Oz the authors have created from the original cloth.
L. A. Armitage and Emma Savant have a long running series Kingdom of Fairytales, which focuses on the grown offspring of various fairy tale heroines. There’s a four book subset entitled Jakon: Son of Dorothy (available in an ebook boxset), which updates the reader on current events in Oz. The series starts eighteen years after the original Oz, with Jakon, current Mayor of Oz finding himself imprisoned by ogres without knowing why. The series covers his battle to escape, to reclaim his proper place, take care of his siblings and further his growing flirtation/romance with Clement, another prisoner he meets in the first book. These are described as fast reads.
Female Main Characters attending dark and wondrous academies is another current trope in many genres of romance and JB Trepagnier has utilized this framework to spin out her Emerald Academy Series into four books focusing on Francesca (‘Frankie’), the daughter of the late Wicked Witch of the West, who is competing with many other individuals for the right to take over her mother’s job as a Sentinel. She’s learning the magic skills she needs at the Academy. Sentinels of Oz is book one and is the beginning of a Why Choose romance series with plenty of adventure and new perspectives on the tried and true Oz we know, including Dorothy who may or may not be a villain.
Kendra Moreno’s Heirs of Oz series is part of an even larger universe the author has created, with the Sons of Wonderland and the Daughters of Neverland preceding this set of four books. Most reviewers seemed to agree it was a good idea to read the other series first before diving into Heartless As A Tin Man, in order to understand certain elements of the plot. The FMC here is Briella Mae, who falls into Oz while spending time at Bullfrog Creek. Once there she has to do her best to figure out what’s what and who’s who, although the Tin Man is the conflicted villain this time around and their love story is complicated. Book two features Cinder and the Scarecrow and book three has Red and the Cowardly (now King) Lion. These are dark and spicy fantasies – nothing lighthearted here.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road indeed if retellings are a genre you enjoy and happy reading!