If Oskar and Eli’s wary friendship—trading a Rubik’s Cube by the jungle gym, negotiating the rules of invitation, and culminating in that chilling swimming-pool rescue—broke your heart, you’ll be drawn to Conor’s nightly visits from the yew-tree monster. A Monster Calls channels the same ache of loneliness and the fierce, unexpected comfort found in a not-quite-human ally who tells hard truths and stands by a child when no one else will.

If the grim flats of Blackeberg, Eli’s feral pragmatism, and Håkan’s sordid errands gripped you, The Lesser Dead plunges you into 1978 New York, where Joey Peacock’s vampire “family” haunts the subway in junkie-like cycles of hunger and denial. It’s as bleak and bracing as Virginia’s cat-swarm scene—full of shocking reversals and the same unsentimental look at what monsters do to survive among us.

If you were compelled by the interior lives in Let the Right One In—Oskar’s fixation on violence, Eli’s complicated need to feed—The Last Werewolf gives you Jacob Marlowe’s razor-edged confession as the world’s final lycanthrope. It’s psychologically probing and brutally frank about killing and desire, echoing the way Lindqvist peers into hunger, shame, and the twisted tenderness that binds predator and companion.

If you liked the slow-burn dread of Blackeberg—neighbors like Lacke and Virginia circling danger before all hell breaks loose—Mexican Gothic tightens that same screw inside a decaying mansion. As Noemí pries into the Doyle family’s secrets, the encroaching rot feels as inevitable and suffocating as the way Eli’s presence stains the ordinary with terror.

If the everyday bleakness of Blackeberg—schoolyards, stairwells, and dingy courtyards—made Eli’s horrors hit harder, Hendrix’s Charleston suburb does the same. When Patricia suspects her charming new neighbor, the threat to local kids echoes Oskar’s peril, and the community’s denial recalls how adults overlook the blood trail until it’s too late.