About For No Mortal Creature: In this romantic, lush fantasy inspired by Wuthering Heights, a girl with the power to move between life and death must travel into the afterlife to save her grandmother. But to survive she’ll have to rely on her mortal enemy, as well as the ghost of the boy who once betrayed her. OUT NOW.

Love it or loathe it, the recent trailer for Emerald Fennel’s upcoming Wuthering Heights adaptation definitely set tongues wagging. The film itself, which features Australian stars Margot Robbie as Cathy Earnshaw and Jacob Elordi as the infamous Heathcliff, is described on IMDb as an exploration of the “intense and destructive relationship” between the two. Certainly the sneak peek seems to channel the wild, chaotic sensuality that churns unsettlingly beneath the surface of the original Brontë novel. However, critics of the casting have pointed out that choosing 35-year-old blonde Robbie to play what is canonically a dark-haired teenager, and Elordi to play what many scholars believe is a person of colour, is problematic. Regardless of personal opinion, the film, which is set to release in February 2026, will almost certainly be a loose and fast interpretation of the source material.

Wuthering Heights has long served as inspiration for other art forms, and books are no exception. For me, personally, the novel has shaped my own relationship with gothic and classic fiction over my lifetime. Its rawness, brutality, depictions of classism and racism, and portrayals of intergenerational trauma, left a deep impression on me as a teenager reading it for the very first time. And upon each re-read (and there have been many!) this work sinks its hooks into me even deeper – much like the lifelong obsession Heathcliff has for Cathy.

This is why, when it came to write my upcoming gothic Young Adult novel For No Mortal Creature, I used Wuthering Heights as one of my key inspirations.

If you’re like me, and you’re a little bit Wuthering Heights obsessed too, then here are some books to feed your addiction…

What Souls Are Made Of by Tasha Suri

This 2022 Young Adult retelling of Wuthering Heights is part of the Remixed Classics series, where authors from marginalised backgrounds reinterpret classic works through their own cultural lenses to subvert the overwhelming cishet, white, and male conventions of classic literature. In this retelling, Tasha Suri, an award-winning fantasy author, casts Heathcliff as the abandoned son of a lascar – an Indian sailor, which ironically is closer to canon than Jacob Elordi is. Catherine herself is reimagined as a British Indian teenager who is struggling with her own relationship between love and duty.

Ruthless Devotion by Rebecca Kenney

In this dark, spicy retelling of Wuthering Heights, Cathy and Heathcliff find each other in a small cult community. In this book, Cathy Earnshaw has a secret: she can sense death. And Heathcliff, who was stolen as a child and raised by necromancers, has secrets of his own. As the two embark on a romance at once violent and tender, they are forced to reckon with a community – and a world – that’s determined to keep them apart. Described as a Southern Gothic retelling with a magical, fantastical twist, this book is the third book in the Gilded Monsters series of interconnected standalones and sits firmly within the New Adult age category.

For No Mortal Creature by Keshe Chow

My own book, a gothic Young Adult novel that released on the 7^th of October, is set in a world where ghosts can die and become ghosts of ghosts – and no one knows how deep the afterlife truly goes. Jia Yi must delve through the many layers of the death realm in order to save her grandmother. In order to survive, she must rely on her two mortal (and immortal enemies): the ghost of Lin, the boy who once betrayed her; and the cold, aloof Essien Lancaster, prince of a rival kingdom. Brimming with romance, atmosphere, and Chinese superstitions, it’s like Inception crossed with Wuthering Heights, but with ghosts.

The Favorites by Layne Fargo

From the moors of Northern England to the ice rinks, this contemporary retelling of Wuthering Heights was released in January 2025 and immediately took the world by storm. This novel follows Katarina Shaw and Heath Rocha as they navigate, as teens, the cutthroat world of competitive ice dancing, until a shocking incident at the 2014 Winter Olympic Games brings their partnership to an abrupt end. Set ten years after the fact, alternating between narrative text and clips from a fictional 2024 documentary, The Favorites transplants the savage, toxic love between Cathy and Heathcliff into a thoroughly modern setting.

Heathcliff by Karina Halle

While there aren’t many details about book, since it’s not due to come out until next year, it’s described as being a Gothic vampire romantasy retelling of Wuthering Heights; Halle suggests that Heathcliff himself will be portrayed in “all his broody glory”.

The post Five Wuthering Heights-Inspired Novels To Add To Your TBR appeared first on The Nerd Daily.

As readers we’ve all come to absolutely love and enjoy the slow-burn build-up of a book; the patience and angst that comes with it only adding to the experience (when done well, of course). However, finding books that draw your interest and tickle your intrigue from page one are a rare and special treat and Beautiful Villain is certainly one of those reads.

Rebecca Kenney’s writing is fast paced and addictive and there’s a certain youthfulness to the read that I hadn’t expected to find. Given how long it had been since I dove into a book that reads this way, I was impressed to observe it did not much influence my experience negatively. What did surprise me about the book was that there were as many poignant moments as there was youthful angst written into it. With lots of heart and a unique storyline carved out of some seen-before themes, Beautiful Villain has the potential to be a ‘single-sitting’ read for most readers.

The set-up in this book is fairly familiar: a long lost friend that the FMC has never forgotten who reappears in her life and turns everything she knows on its head. A fairly simple world; but the way that Kenney has built this storyline and crafted the worldbuilding is what makes this book what it is. With deeply emotional moments, moral dilemmas, and surprises, Beautiful Villain secures its own little corner in the well-paved path of its genre. That being said, I would classify Beautiful Villain to occupy a sweet spot that exists between high fantasy, magical realism, and maybe even some science fiction! However you wish to classify it, Kenney has done a great job selling the narrative to the reader. Portrayed in single person perspective Beautiful Villain follows a straightforward approach to narration. Facts and emotion tangle in an initially simple but increasingly complex tale between two childhood friends who are more than they seem.

The plot for the story I think is definitely one of the more strong elements of the book. Beautiful Villain has many subtle details and intricate aspects that slowly merge and weave into one evident story purpose. However, as mentioned earlier, there are many other underlying emotional elements that infiltrate every scene. I do think that this book gave off the energy of a standalone, however if it were to be a series, I can see all that’s been written into it that would be perfect for resolving later. But, if this book is a standalone, there were many little threads that I found weren’t particularly tied off with a neat conclusion to them. They may not be extremely noticeable but they were my more favourite parts of the book and I loved that the author had included  (subtly) and spoken about the many facets of a mental health struggle. So I personally would have loved seeing them all explored and concluded.

The characters in the book are aplenty, but I greatly commend the author in the way that she wrote them into the story. With precise and sometimes even hard hitting introductions, all the characters (be it primary, secondary or tertiary) were extremely well defined and occupied exactly the right amount of scene space and were mostly never plot devices. With unique and distinct personalities, every character will certainly leave an impression both in the story and in the reader’s mind.

As neat as many aspects of the book were, I did feel that some that seemed simple were made complex and those that were complex were simplified too much; especially as the book neared to the end. It was at those points that I personally experienced some disbelief and confusion; which also ties back to my struggles with the way that some of the plot lines were resolved

Beautiful Villain can certainly draw you into its story where science and magic co-exist and make you forget the world for a few hours. This book has many sensitive and graphic themes that can be triggering for some. Please check content warnings before reading.

Beautiful Villain is available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore, as of July 16th 2024.

Will you be picking up Beautiful Villain? Tell us in the comments below!

Synopsis | Goodreads

Seven years ago, I lost him for good. Now he’s back, but is he still the Jay Gatsby I used to know…or is he something more? Something…darker.

Daisy Finnegan is looking forward to the endless golden freedom of summer. She doesn’t want to think about life after college, or the newly awakened power of her voice, which has a way of making people do frightening things. But when her cousin goes missing at an exclusive house party, Daisy confronts the mysterious host…only to discover the wealthy recluse is Jay Gatsby, her childhood sweetheart―now sinfully hot and impossible to deny.

It isn’t long before Daisy becomes entangled in a web of dizzying wealth and lies and obsession darker than she could have dreamed―culminating in a shocking act of violence that shatters the summer haze and threatens to drown them all.

But it isn’t until Gatsby is shot through the heart―and survives―that Daisy discovers the truth of how Gatsby clawed his way up in the world by selling the secret of immortality to the highest bidder. Now with her friends’ lives at stake, her own untested power still volatile, and an unimaginable threat closing in, Daisy will have to face an impossible choice: side with the man who claimed her body and soul…or with the monsters who would see him lost to her forever.

An addictive and truly original spicy New Adult retelling of The Great Gatsby with a magical twist.

The post Review: Beautiful Villain by Rebecca Kenney appeared first on The Nerd Daily.