If the way Jonas’s impossible drowning and those uncanny messages to his friend unfolded in whisper-soft, poetic language hooked you, you’ll love the lush, myth-tinged voice of Ava Lavender. Walton’s prose carries family curses and first loves with the same shimmering, melancholic beauty that made the woods and water in We Were Restless Things feel sacred and strange.

You were drawn to how a lake that shouldn’t exist—and messages from a boy who shouldn’t be alive—slipped into ordinary days. In Summer of Salt, a storm-tossed island and its quietly inherited magic shape grief, first love, and a mystery surrounding a beloved bird. It captures that same gentle creep of the unreal into a close-knit community, with tenderness and a hint of danger.

If you loved circling the truth of Jonas’s death through different voices, The Raven Boys will feel like coming home. Blue, Gansey, Ronan, Adam, and Noah each tilt the supernatural search in their own way—much like how each narrator in We Were Restless Things refracted the lake, the woods, and the lingering presence of a boy who wouldn’t let go.

If the close, almost claustrophobic circle of friends and the town hemmed in by trees and water pulled you in, The Accident Season echoes that intimacy. Over one dangerous month, Cara’s family navigates bruised truths, a missing girl, and a haunting that feels as close as breath—much like the way the forest and the not-quite-there lake pressed in on every choice.

If what lingered for you was the raw, unsettling headspace—the way grief, desire, and guilt bled into the uncanny circumstances of Jonas’s death—The Walls Around Us digs into that same psychological thrum. Two girls and a prison full of ghosts unravel a truth that feels inevitable and shocking at once, echoing the way the lake’s secret reshaped everyone who touched it.