If you’re anything like me, when September rolls around, you wind up lost in nostalgia for school. It’s hard to forget the excitement of new school supplies and getting to see friends you haven’t seen all summer. Combine that with a lack of adult responsibilities and the time to learn new stuff all day? It’s a yearning that’s hard to shake. The start of school also leads into Fall and eventually Hallowe’en – which frankly I’ve been looking forward to since the previous Hallowe’en (or at the very least since the beginning of Summer). If you’re looking for something to satisfy both parts of your nerdy dark heart, let me suggest a genre known as dark academia.
I will admit that I haven’t read much of the genre, so this is as much a reading list for me as recommendations for you. The book that really introduced me to dark academia is Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo. Lots of books have been written about the secret societies at Yale, but this book asks – what if they also had magic? The main character, Alex Stern, is there on scholarship and part of a group that is supposed to keep the secret societies from performing forbidden magic. The best part is, if you really love this book, you only have to wait until January for the sequel, Hell Bent!
Books in the genre don’t necessarily have magic in them though. Basically the formula is academic setting + sinister plot/tragedy = dark academia. If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio is a good example of this. The book is about a group of Shakespearean actors at a conservatory. In their fourth year, competition gets ugly and someone is murdered. However, the person serving prison time may not be the one who committed the crime, and the retiring detective wants to find out the truth once and for all.
As I’m writing this, I realize a LOT of books in this genre have a waiting list (thanks, #BookTok), so why not introduce you to some that don’t? Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas is about a school that requires students to give up any contact with the outside world for a chance at greatness. All the best minds have graduated from this school. Through the main character, Ines, we see what appears to be strange mass hypnosis rituals at a school that already has cult-like behavior. If you didn’t check off the Summer Book Bingo box for “Sci-fi or Fantasy by a BIPOC author”, this book fills that requirement! I know – Summer is over, but that doesn’t mean you have to stop in the quest to broaden your reading habits!
To round out this list, the last two are The Temple House Vanishing by Rachel Donohue and The Maidens by Alex Michaelides. Temple House is set in Ireland at a Catholic all-girls school, and is about a teacher and student who go missing, and a journalist digging in 25 years later to find out what happened. The Maidens is about a handsome and charismatic Greek tragedy professor and a secret society of women at the school who are obsessed with him. Greek mythology, secret societies, and a murder mystery – what more could you want?
“I need more suggestions” you cry! I get it – I can only make a blog post so long. If you blaze through these and still want more, several of these books popped up in our catalog with dark academia reading lists at the bottom, so explore these lists, and develop your own creepy curriculum in this genre!
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