If slipping from Franco’s Spain into a treacherous fairy realm spoke to you—especially the way Ofelia is tested by ambiguous rules—you’ll love Every Heart a Doorway. Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children gathers teens who once crossed into other worlds and can’t let go. Like Ofelia, Nancy returns from a realm with strict, unsettling customs and must navigate loyalty and danger when a series of murders threatens the school. The doors here are as tempting—and as perilous—as the labyrinth’s, and the magic carries the same eerie price.

You endured Ofelia’s terror in Captain Vidal’s house and the ghastly Pale Man’s lair; The Changeling channels that same nightmare seepage into everyday life. When Apollo’s family is torn apart by an uncanny act that feels ripped from a grim folktale, he descends into New York’s shadowy corners—swap meets, secret islands, clandestine grimoires—to confront forces as predatory as any monster Ofelia faced. It’s a modern fairy tale with teeth, where love and obsession meet real-world brutality.

If the ancient, whispering magic behind the Faun and the mandrake-root trials captivated you, The Bear and the Nightingale will feel like stepping deeper into that forest. Vasilisa communes with house spirits and frost demons while facing the encroaching zealotry of authority figures—echoes of Ofelia resisting Vidal’s control. The story draws richly from Slavic myth, balancing hearth spirits and the terrifying Medved with a heroine who, like Ofelia, chooses courage over obedience.

If you appreciated how Pan’s Labyrinth uses the Faun, the Pale Man, and the labyrinth itself as symbols of resistance to fascist cruelty, The Master and Margarita offers a kindred spell. The Devil arrives in Soviet Moscow with a talking cat and a demonic entourage, exposing hypocrisy through surreal set pieces as pointed as Ofelia’s subversive quests under Vidal’s nose. Beneath the spectacle runs a bold critique of authoritarianism and a tender, defiant love story.

Like Ofelia’s journey—smuggling chalk, braving the toad, and refusing the Faun’s final demand—David’s passage into a storybook world forces him to choose what kind of person he’ll become. The Book of Lost Things warps familiar tales into something as menacing as the Pale Man’s banquet, confronting grief, courage, and moral choice. It’s a dark rite of passage where each trial cuts as deeply as life under Captain Vidal’s watchful eye.