If you loved how Lucy hears scratching in the walls, gets dismissed, and then faces the wolves who throw wild parties and eat jam on toast, you'll click with Coraline squeezing through the tiny door to find the Other Mother waiting with button eyes and a too-perfect house. Like Lucy leading her family back to reclaim their rooms, Coraline schemes to outwit the Other Mother and rescue her parents, turning a creepy home invasion into a gutsy home reclamation. The stakes stay close—one girl, one house, one very wrong world—and the courage feels just as immediate.

Lucy’s certainty that something is living in the walls—before anyone believes her—mirrors Molly and Kip arriving at the crumbling Windsor estate and noticing the muddy footprints and whispers tied to the great tree outside. Where the wolves burst out and take over the house with music and mayhem, the Night Gardener’s presence seeps in slowly—night visits, strange gifts, wishes that come true at a cost. If the loose, eerie rules behind the wolves’ sudden appearance hooked you, the creeping, story-fed magic of the tree and the shadowy figure who tends it will, too.

Did you cackle when the wolves blasted on tubas and danced while Lucy’s family hid in the garden—equal parts scary and absurd? Dahl hits that same nerve. The Grand High Witch’s hotel conference is both terrifying and ridiculous, with schemes to turn children into mice using Formula 86 and farcical mishaps in the dining room. Like Lucy’s pig-puppet bravery when she charges back into the house, the boy-hero and his grandmother hatch audacious, laugh-in-the-dark plans. You’ll get chills and chuckles in the same breath.

If the moment the wolves finally burst from the walls and Lucy’s family is forced into the cold garden thrilled you, you’ll relish Bonnie and Sylvia’s world where wolves prowl the roads and, inside the manor, Miss Slighcarp swiftly seizes control. Like the twist when Lucy turns the tables and chases the wolves out of each room, these girls face turnabouts—lost guardians, forged papers, perilous escapes—then plot a daring return to reclaim their home. It’s the same house-in-peril energy with extra swerves.

Lucy’s the one who insists the noise is real, clutches her pig-puppet, and finally leads the charge to take the house back room by room. Corinne La Mer brings that same steel when Severine—a jumbie in human guise—enchants the island and threatens Corinne’s home and friends. As with the wolves who swarm the kitchen and living room, the jumbies push in close, forcing a brave kid to fight for her place. You’ll get a resolute heroine, clever plans, and a home reclaimed from the uncanny.