In the first book, Every Heart a Doorway, we meet the children and adults at Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children, a place children returning from a fantasy adventure to help acclimate back to life in our reality. (Narnia’s Pevensies or Wonderland’s Alice would be great candidates, for example.) When children start to turn up murdered, the children have a mystery to solve.

The second installment, Down Among the Sticks and Bones, tells the story of Jack and Jill—how they ended up in their fantasy world, and what led to them getting kicked out. The third installment, Beneath the Sugar Sky, returns to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children for a new story. All of the novellas work as standalones, but can also be read together.

Carry On by Rainbow Rowell

Carry On, the standalone follow-up to Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, is another example of recent fantasy that has some things to say about the stalwarts of fantasy literature. In Carry On‘s case, the work it comments on and critiques is Harry Potter, and it’s the perfect read for anyone who grew up reading the fantasy classics, but who wants to lovingly critique the story as an adult.

Carry On is the story of Simon Snow, a young wizard at his final year at Watford School of Magicks. Simon is The Chosen One, but he’s not very good at it—unable to control his powers and desperate to do so to curb the magic-stealing villain with his face who keeps causing trouble. It doesn’t help that his girlfriend recently broke up with him or that his roommate/nemesis/possible vampire Baz is nowhere to be found. His absence is very distracting.

This book is a delightful subversion of the Chosen One narrative, giving the story not just to Simon, but to Baz and witches Agatha and Penelope to tell. It’s a queer love story. It’s meta-commentary on Harry Potter and fan culture. And it follows the best of fanfiction tropes (meant here and always as a total compliment) to tell its story.