7 books like The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell, from The School for Good and Evil to Nevermoor: fairy tale adventures for readers who loved Alex and Conner.
Updated June 11, 2026
Chris Colfer's The Wishing Spell works because it takes the fairy tales kids already know and asks what happened after the endings. Twins Alex and Conner fall into their grandmother's storybook and meet a Cinderella who is now a queen, a Goldilocks who became an outlaw, and an Evil Queen with an actual backstory, all while racing to collect the items of the Wishing Spell so they can get home. The mix is distinctive: genuine fairy tale geography, sibling banter (bookish Alex, wisecracking Conner), and villains who turn out to be more complicated than their stories let on.
The books below are sorted by which part of that you want more of. If it was the fractured fairy tale world, The Fairy Tale Detectives, A Tale Dark & Grimm, The School for Good and Evil, and Ella Enchanted all remix the Grimm and Cinderella material in different registers, from comic mystery to genuinely dark retelling. If it was kids crossing into a magical world, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and Nevermoor deliver that doorway moment. And if you simply want to know what happens to Alex and Conner next, The Enchantress Returns is the direct sequel.
A practical note on age and order: these range from gentle middle grade to slightly darker fare. A Tale Dark & Grimm leans into the gore of the original Grimm tales (played for laughs, but still), while Ella Enchanted and Narnia are safe for younger readers. And if a series hooks you, every book here except Ella Enchanted opens one, so check that you are starting at book one.
Books to Read If You Like The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell
The Fairy Tale Detectives
by Michael Buckley
Read this if fairy tale characters living on after their stories was your favorite part.
Michael Buckley's first Sisters Grimm book is the closest match on this list to what The Wishing Spell actually does. Sisters Sabrina and Daphne Grimm learn they are descendants of the Brothers Grimm and that the fairy tale characters (Everafters, in this world) are real, living hidden in the town of Ferryport Landing. Like Colfer, Buckley loves showing you what Prince Charming or the Three Little Pigs became after the stories ended, and like Alex and Conner, the sisters are a sibling pair who solve problems by knowing the tales better than anyone around them.
The difference is genre: this is a mystery series rather than a quest. Each book is a case to crack, with the fairy tale lore as the world rather than the destination, and the tone is a bit snappier and more detective-story than Colfer's earnest adventure. It also predates The Land of Stories by several years, so fans sometimes argue about who did the idea best. Pick it if you want the fractured fairy tale concept with a puzzle to solve; there are nine books, so it can carry you a long way.
Read this if you want the actual Grimm tales, blood and all, with a narrator who jokes about it.
Adam Gidwitz takes Hansel and Gretel and walks them through a string of real Grimm stories, the unsanitized kind with severed fingers and ovens, while an intrusive narrator keeps interrupting to warn you about what is coming and to usher small children out of the room. It shares The Wishing Spell's central move, kids traveling through fairy tale territory and discovering the stories are messier than the picture book versions, and the sibling pair at its heart will feel familiar to Alex and Conner fans.
It is noticeably darker than Colfer, though, and that is the point. The violence is real even when the narrator plays it for comedy, and the emotional core (children failed by their parents, learning to save themselves) hits harder than anything in The Land of Stories. Confident readers who thought The Wishing Spell was a little safe will love it; sensitive readers may want to wait a year or two. It opens a trilogy, and the narrator gimmick stays fresh longer than you would expect.
Read this if the good-versus-evil machinery of fairy tales is what fascinates you.
Soman Chainani's series asks where fairy tale heroes and villains come from, and answers with a school: every four years two children are taken to be trained, one for Good, one for Evil. Best friends Sophie and Agatha are dropped on the opposite sides everyone expects, beautiful Sophie into Evil, grim Agatha into Good, and the whole series runs on the same question The Wishing Spell keeps raising, whether the villain labels in fairy tales are fair. Colfer's sympathetic Evil Queen would fit right into this world.
It reads older than The Land of Stories. The friendship between the two girls gets genuinely thorny, there is more romance, and the moral questions are pushed further, so it works best for readers at the top of the middle grade range or moving into YA. It is also a school story rather than a journey, with rivalries and classes instead of a map and a quest. Six books, plus a Netflix film adaptation that the books are better than.
The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
by C.S. Lewis
Read this for the original kids-fall-through-a-doorway-into-a-magical-world story.
Alex and Conner falling into a book is a direct descendant of the Pevensie children walking through a wardrobe into Narnia. C.S. Lewis's 1950 classic established the template The Wishing Spell runs on: ordinary siblings, a hidden world with its own rules and creatures, a tyrant to defeat (the White Witch here, who out-menaces any Colfer villain), and the question of whether and how to get home. If your reader loved the doorway moment more than the fairy tale references, this is the source.
Expect an older voice. The prose is formal by modern middle grade standards, the pacing is gentler, there are no pop culture winks, and the Christian allegory running underneath is either invisible or central depending on the reader. It is also shorter than The Wishing Spell and moves quickly once the wardrobe opens. A book worth reading at least once in childhood regardless of what else is on the shelf, and there are six more Narnia books waiting behind it.
Read this if you want one fairy tale retold with a heroine who outsmarts her own story.
Gail Carson Levine's Newbery Honor book retells Cinderella with one brilliant change: Ella was cursed at birth with obedience, so she must do anything anyone commands. That premise turns the familiar tale into a story about a sharp, funny girl fighting for control of her own life, and it shares The Wishing Spell's affection for taking a story everyone knows and revealing the person trapped inside it. Like Colfer's reimagined queens and outlaws, Ella is a fairy tale figure given a real interior life.
It is a single, self-contained novel rather than a series opener, and it stays inside one tale instead of touring the whole fairy tale canon, so it is narrower than The Land of Stories but deeper. The romance with Prince Char is more central than anything in Colfer, which makes it a natural pick for readers starting to want that. Skip the 2004 movie, or at least read the book first; they share a premise and almost nothing else.
Read this if you want the most inventive magical world on this list.
Jessica Townsend's Morrigan Crow is a cursed child blamed for everything that goes wrong in her town and doomed to die at midnight on her eleventh birthday, until a man named Jupiter North spirits her away to the hidden city of Nevermoor, where she must pass four trials to earn the right to stay. It scratches the same itch as The Wishing Spell, a child pulled out of an unhappy ordinary life into a dazzling secret world, and Nevermoor itself (a hotel that rearranges its rooms, a giant talking cat, an umbrella-based transit system) is built with the kind of generosity Colfer fans will recognize.
There are no fairy tales here, which is the main difference: Nevermoor is its own invention rather than a remix of Grimm and Perrault, and it sits closer to Harry Potter in shape (trials, a found family, a shadowy villain with a connection to the heroine). The emotional stakes also run a little deeper, since Morrigan starts the story unloved in a way Alex and Conner never are. Arguably the best-written book on this list, and the series is still going.
Read this if you just want to follow Alex and Conner back into the fairy tale world.
The most obvious recommendation is also the right one: The Enchantress Returns is the direct sequel, picking up about a year after The Wishing Spell with the twins desperate to get back into the Land of Stories just as the Enchantress who once cursed Sleeping Beauty returns to conquer it. Everything that made the first book work is here, the twins' back-and-forth, the reimagined fairy tale royalty, a new collect-the-items quest (this time assembling the Wand of Wonderment), and a villain with more going on than pure evil.
It is bigger and busier than the first book, which most fans count as a plus, and the series builds real continuity from here, so this is the point where The Land of Stories stops being a standalone adventure and becomes a six-book saga with a planned arc. If The Wishing Spell already won your reader over, there is no reason to detour: the series is designed to be read straight through, and the later books reward it.
What should I read after The Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell?
If you want to stay with Alex and Conner, go straight to The Enchantress Returns, the second of six books in the series. If you want something in the same spirit by a different author, The Fairy Tale Detectives by Michael Buckley is the closest match, with fairy tale characters living secret modern lives, and Nevermoor by Jessica Townsend is the strongest pick for a brand-new magical world.
What age is The Land of Stories for, and are these books the same level?
The Land of Stories is solidly middle grade, usually recommended for ages 8 to 12. Most of this list sits in the same range. A Tale Dark & Grimm runs darker and gorier than Colfer, so it suits confident readers, and The School for Good and Evil reads older, closer to ages 10 and up, with more complicated friendships and some romance.
How many Land of Stories books are there?
The main series is six books, beginning with The Wishing Spell (2012) and ending with Worlds Collide (2017). Chris Colfer has also written companion material set in the same universe, including the A Tale of Magic prequel trilogy, which works as a next stop for readers who finish the main series.
Is The Sisters Grimm series like The Land of Stories?
Yes, it is the most commonly suggested read-alike. The Fairy Tale Detectives, the first Sisters Grimm book, features two sisters who discover fairy tale characters are real and living among us. The big difference is structure: Sisters Grimm books are mysteries set in one town, while The Land of Stories is a quest through the fairy tale world itself.
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