Riot Recommendation

Riot Recommendation: 20 of Your Favorite YA Interpretations of Classics!

Vanessa Diaz

Managing Editor

Book Riot Managing Editor Vanessa Diaz is a writer and former bookseller from San Diego, CA whose Spanish is even faster than her English. When not reading or writing, she enjoys dreaming up travel itineraries and drinking entirely too much tea. She is a regular co-host on the All the Books podcast who especially loves mysteries, gothic lit, mythology/folklore, and all things witchy. Vanessa can be found on Instagram at @BuenosDiazSD or taking pictures of pretty trees in Portland, OR, where she now resides.

Flatiron Books, publisher of Anna K by Jenny Lee

Dazzlingly opulent and emotionally riveting, Anna K: A Love Story is a brilliant reimagining of Leo Tolstoy's timeless love story, Anna Karenina―but above all, it is a novel about the dizzying, glorious, heart-stopping experience of first love and first heartbreak

There is no universal approach to reading the classics: we all know that a work that beguiles and ensnares one person may intimidate another, and what bores one reader to tears may be the inspo behind their neighbor’s sleeve tattoo. No matter how you’ve approached classics in the past, it’s exciting to see a surge in amazing YA retellings bringing fresh and (it’s about time!) inclusive perspectives to familiar stories. That’s why we asked you for your favorite YA retellings of classic lit and now our TBRs are crying. Here are 20 of your YA favorite classics remixes!

Pride by Ibi Zboi

This Monstrous Thing by Mackenzi Lee

A Study in Charlotte by Brittany Cavallaro

Well Played by Katrina Ramos Atienza

Blanca & Roja by Anna-Marie McLemore

Prom and Prejudice by Elizabeth Eulberg

The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White

Dorothy Must Die by Danielle Paige

Brightly Burning by Alexa Donne

A Blade So Black by L.L. McKinney

Jane Austen Goes to Hollywood by Abby McDonald

Wrong in all the Right Ways by Tiffany Brownlee

Sky Without Stars by Jessica Brody and Joanne Rendell

The Beholder by Anna Bright

Olivia Twist by Lorie Langdon

Railsea by China Miéville

The Wrath and the Dawn by Renée Ahdieh

Ordinary Girls by Blair Thornburgh

A Steep and Thorny Way by Cat Winters

Conversion by Catherine Howe