Saturday Spotlight: Retelling Book #4- The Four Kingdoms

This month’s Saturday Spotlight features retellings, and this week I highlight Melanie Cellier’s Four Kingdoms series. I praise Cellier’s clean romances and unique retellings, especially The Desert Princess. With a total of twenty-two books, excitement builds for forthcoming reads, including the Twelve Dancing Princesses retelling.

This month’s Saturday Spotlight theme is Retellings! I have shared Once Upon a Time, Twelfth Knight, and Sisters Ever After. You can find those posts here, here, and here.

This week I am sharing the Four Kingdoms world by Melanie Cellier.

Admittedly, I have only read one of her books from her third arc, but I loved it and have bought the rest of her books in this world, only waiting on two more!

The book I read was The Desert Princess and was a retelling of Aladdin, which I learned are shockingly hard to find. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I first read it, but I loved it. It was well written and a wonderful retelling. It was one of my favorite books from 2024.

There are many things that are drawing me to Melanie Cellier’s books. First, they are all clean romances, which I love. Second, they are all retellings. Third, some of the retellings are of stories I am not familiar with or that I have not seen retold. She has a Princess and the Pea book, Puss in Boots book, The Ugly Duckling book, and a retelling of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves. Fourth, there are a lot of them. I love long series, and while you can read these as standalones, I won’t. There are twenty-two books in this entire universe, and I am so excited to binge it!

There are four different arcs in her series. The first one is the Four Kingdoms. The second is Beyond the Four Kingdoms. The third one is Return to the Four Kingdoms. The fourth one is the Four Kingdoms Duology. Again, most of these can be read in standalone order, but characters from past books might make appearances or be mentioned, so it might be easier to read them in order.

I am excited to read these books in the coming months, probably towards the end of summer reading. I am especially excited for the retelling of the Twelve Dancing Princesses!

Happy reading and happy (almost) summer!