The Perfume

by Katherine Sutcliffe

Like Dove's sudden transformation through the perfume, Schweblin's protagonist experiences a fragmented awakening to something terrible she can't quite remember—except her disorientation is told through fever-dream logic rather than linear narrative. Both books trap you inside a character's mounting dread as they realize they're not who they thought they were, and both use a single catalyst object (perfume/a swimming pool incident) to unlock psychological horror.

by Shirley Jackson

Jackson's 1959 masterpiece shares Cooney's interest in how external forces can awaken something dormant and dangerous within a person—except Jackson explores this through a house that may or may not be genuinely haunted, leaving you uncertain whether Eleanor's unraveling self is supernatural or psychological. The prose has that same creeping inevitability: you watch a character lose control of themselves and can't quite pinpoint when it started.

by Kang Han

This is the curveball recommendation, but hear me out: Han Kang writes about a woman whose single decision—refusing to eat meat—unleashes a cascade of transformations in her identity and relationships that she can't control or fully understand. Like Dove with the perfume, the protagonist makes one choice and discovers she's become someone else entirely, told through fragmented perspectives that make you question what's real about her supposed 'other self.'

by Nick Tosches

Kingfisher (Ursula Vernon's adult pen name) writes folk-horror that builds the same way Cooney does—through small, unsettling details that accumulate into genuine dread. Her protagonist inherits a house and discovers something ancient and wrong lurking in its history, and like Dove's awakening, there's a sense that something has been waiting, patient and hungry, for the right moment to emerge.

by Michael Coren

Schwab explores what happens when a young woman makes a desperate bargain that fundamentally alters who she is—she becomes invisible to the world, unable to be remembered, and must live with this fractured identity across centuries. It shares Cooney's fascination with how a single moment can split a person into before-and-after selves, though Schwab gives you the full scope of that transformation across time rather than just its terrifying inception.