If the lyricism of Imaginary Girls pulled you under—Chloe’s gauzy, waterlogged memories of the drowned town of Olive and her almost-spellbound devotion to Ruby—you’ll savor the way The Strange and Beautiful Sorrows of Ava Lavender turns grief and desire into living myths. Like the eerie night at the reservoir and the whispers about London Hayes, Walton’s sentences shimmer with omen and wonder, wrapping family secrets and small-town superstition in language that feels incantatory.

If you were captivated by how Chloe’s narration in Imaginary Girls blurs truth—her fixation on Ruby’s power, the impossible return of London, the way the reservoir seems to warp memory—then We Were Liars delivers that same seductive uncertainty. Cadence tells you her story on a private island the way Chloe circles around Olive: intimate, confessional, and unreliable—until the final revelations recast everything you thought you knew.

If what held you in Imaginary Girls was Chloe’s psychological pull toward Ruby—the way love, envy, and guilt refract the mystery of London’s death and the secrets under the water—Bone Gap offers that same deep dive. Finn’s skewed perception of faces, Roza’s vanishing, and a Midwestern town as uncanny as Olive become mirrors for inner wounds, much like the reservoir becomes a mirror for Chloe’s longing and dread.

If the slippery magic of Imaginary Girls spoke to you—the impossible things Ruby can make people believe, the town of Olive sleeping beneath the reservoir, the boundary between rumor and spell—then The Ocean at the End of the Lane will feel like a secret you once knew. A quiet neighborhood unthreads into myth, much as Chloe’s small town does, and the Hempstock women wield the kind of soft, unnerving power Ruby seems to command.

If you loved how Imaginary Girls keeps its circle tight—Chloe, Ruby, the reservoir, the legend of Olive—and builds tension from whispers and half-truths, The Accident Season conjures that same intimate haunt. A family braces for a cursed month, friends keep dangerous confidences, and the truth hides in photographs and parties the way it hides in the depths where London was found.