Fairytale Reading Challenge 2024

In an effort to kickstart my book blog, I’ve decided to participate in a reading challenge for 2024. After browsing through various challenges posted on the internet, I finally stumbled across a simple yet exciting fairytale based one. 

Posted by Charity Rau, the Fairytale Reading Challenge 2024 focuses on one fairytale for each month. Participants can choose to read the original fairytale or a retelling of some kind. I plan to mostly read fantasy retellings and then provide my thoughts and feelings on each book. However, I hope to expand outside of the fantasy genre for some of the months.

Here are the posted monthly prompts for this challenge:

It’s a fairly laid-back and free challenge which is exactly what I was hoping for. Fairytale retellings have always been hit or miss in my reading experience. On one hand, I love seeing familiar tales reimagined through the eyes of someone else. It's especially exciting when these stories take place in an unfamiliar setting or have a dark twist. On the other hand, I sometimes find these stories fall flat. Whether that be because the tales resemble the original too much to be truly interesting or because they’re too far off the mark. There’s a fine line for books that are based off of fairy tales. Through this challenge, I hope to discover more fairytale retellings that will surprise and entertain me.

For the month of January, the tale of Bluebeard is the focus. However, since I began this challenge a bit late, I will also complete January’s prompt in February. February’s fairytale is Red Riding Hood, and I can already think of various options. 

The Fairytale Reading Challenge of 2024 is linked below, if any other person would like to participate as well. The hashtags are #fairytaleretellingchallenge and #fairytalereadingchallenge2024.

Here is the original challenge’s post from Charity Rau's website: https://charityrau.wordpress.com/2023/12/11/fairytale-reading-challenge-2024/