#dark academia book recommendations

[punki-miltonia]

Ten Word Book Reviews: The Maidens

All the possibility, none taken; inauthentic, vapid; left wanting more

[stardustscripted]

[thereviewverdict]

Despite all my saddened rage, I am still a girl in her room reading her silly little books, watching her silly little films, listening to her silly little playlists.

[clickityquacks]

Alignment chart of dark academia books, emphasis on the academia. I have read them all and this is my take on it all.

Is the novel a dark academia because it takes place in a school and there are a lot of "dark" themes or is it a dark academia because the atmosphere is grim and the characters are pursuing knowledge.

Also book recommendations, I think people would like the books that fall in the same quadrant.

Books under the read more.

Top Left: My favourite corner where I just want the author to flex their niche knowledge.

Piranesi - Susanna Clarke

The Historian - Elizabeth Kostova

If We Were Villains - M. L. Rio

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Fairies - Heather Fawcett

Ninth House - Leigh Bardugo

The Raven Boys - Maggie Steifvater

The Secret History - Donna Tarte

Babel - R. F. Kuang

Bottom right: The intersection between lots of deaths and some niche knowledge. This one is a bit more hand wavey so here are some explanations.

Blood Over Bright Haven - M. L. Wang: Often compared to Babel but has way less niche knowledge and more transactional deaths.

Harrow the Ninth - Tamsyn Muir: This one is a sequel but the convoluted plot lives in my head rent free and it’s Dark (Goth) Academia.

Bunny - Mona Awad: Lots of allusion to literature and mythology. Also lots of dark, bunnies and swans.

Bottom Left: Takes place in a school that people are trying to survive.

The Magicians - Lev Grossman

Vicious - V. E. Schwab

Legendborn - Tracy Deonn

Ace of Spades - Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé

Atlas Six - Olivie Blake

Deadly Education - Naomi Naovik

Top Left: Happens in a school and pretty light on death but has “dark” themes.

The River King - Alice Hoffman

A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder - Holly Jackson

The Initial Insult - Mindy McGinnis

A Study in Drowning - Ava Reid

To Shape a Dragon’s Breath - Moniquill Blackgoose

Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro

You Feel It Just Below the Ribs - Janina Matthewson and Jeffrey Cranor

[ambxtxo]

donna tartt’s reading list

In an interview, Tartt lists her favorite authors and the names of a few works. I have listed the most popular works from each author and the specific ones she recommended as well.

Homer

The Iliad

The Odyssey

Greek Poets and Tragedians

Argonautica

Antigone

Prometheus Bound

The Oresteia

Medea

Oedipus Rex

The Bacchae

The Frogs

Dante

Inferno

Purgatorio

Paradiso

Shakespeare

“I went back and read Macbeth and Hamlet during the pandemic”

Macbeth

Hamlet

Dickens

“Dickens was a part of my familial landscape, the air I breathed.”

A Tale of Two Cities

Great Expectations

Nabokov

Pale Fire

Lolita

Proust

In Search of Lost Time

Swann’s Way

Dostoevsky

Crime and Punishment

The Brothers Karamazov

Yeats

The Collected Poems of W.B. Yeats

Irish Fairy and Folk Tales

Borges

Labyrinths: Selected Stories and Other Writings

Edith Wharton

The House of Mirth

Ethan Frome

Evelyn Waugh

Brideshead Revisited

Helena

Salinger

Catcher in the Rye

Virginia Woolf

Mrs. Dalloway

Orlando

Edward St. Aubyn

The Patrick Melrose Novels

Haruki Murakami

Kafka on the Shore

Norwegian Wood

Olga Tokarczuk

Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead

Don DeLillo

White Noise

Underworld

W.G. Sebald

Austerlitz

The Rings of Saturn

Joan Didion

The Year of Magical Thinking

The White Album

Other Specific Books

Memoirs d’Outre-Tome by Chateaubriand

Jigsaw by Sybille Bedford

All for Nothing by Walter Kempowski

A Balcony in the Forest by Julien Gracq

[booklovers-hub]

The sluttiest thing a hero can do is showing up at the villain's doorstep while they're hurt and saying, "I didn't know where else to go."

[lovesdaya]

@lovesdaya

[vermontdeli]

“The blood jet is poetry, There is no stopping it.” 

-Sylvia Plath

[shakespearesdaughters]

Movies To Watch In 2025

Black Swan (2010)

The White Crow (2018)

The Dancer (2017)

Mao's Last Dancer (2009)

Girl (2018)

Silk Stockings (1957)

Polina (2016)

Incendies 2010

Berthe Morisot (2012)

Summer in February (2013)

Helene (2020)

Modigliani (2004)

Camille Claudel, 1915 (2013)

Mona Lisa's Smile (2003)

Final Portrait (2017)

Edward Munch (1974)

Goya's Ghosts (2006)

Caravaggio 1986

Frida (2002)

Loving Vincent (2017)

Séraphine (2008)

Girl with a Pearl Earring (2003)

Renoir (2012)

The Eternity's Gate (2018)

Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

Call Me By Your Name (2017)

Kill Your Darlings (2013)

Little Women (2019)

Dead Poets Society (1989)

Good Will Hunting (1997)

Maurice (1987)

Before Sunset (2004)

School Ties (1992)

The Skulls (2000)

The Emperor's Club (2002)

Cracks (2009)

The Riot Club (2014)

Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975)

Doctor X (1932)

Never Let Me Go (2010)

Nocturama (2016)

Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)

The Holdovers (2023)

The Handmaiden (2016)

Rope (1948)

Cruel Intentions (1999)

A Beautiful Mind (2001)

Dorian Gray (2009)

Sherlock Holmes (2009)

The Imitation Game (2014)

The Theory of Everything (2014)

Tolkien (2019)

The Dreamers (2003)

Miller’s Girl (2005)

An Education (2009)

Jane Eyre (2011)

A Dangerous Method (2011)

Christopher and His Kind (2011)

Practical Magic (1998)

Knives Out (2019)

The Craft (1996)

Twilight (2008)

The Addams Family (1991)

Atonement (2007)

God's Own Country (2017)

Atlantis (2001)

Hugo (2011)

Stardust (2007)

A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004)

The Mummy (1999)

Rushmore (1998)

Wicked (Upcoming, no set release year yet)

Return to Oz (1985)

Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

The Secret of NIMH (1982)

Crimson Peak (2015)

[venus-invixen]

No because when Lionheart Draco told Hermione “Do you know what I see, Granger, when I think about joining up? The moment I offered up my wand, the Dark Lord would put me on my knees and crack open my skull, to make sure I wasn’t a deserter or double-agent, and he’d find you, and I’d be dead in seconds if he was merciful.”

And when Hozier said “honey, you’re familiar like my mirror years ago—idealism sits in prison, chivalry fell on its sword / innocence died screaming honey ask me I should know / I slithered here from Eden just to sit outside your door” you cannot tell me this isn’t about them. this is my canon.

—

FF: Lionheart by @greenerteacups

[authoreverking]

🐦‍⬛ Raven Society 🐦‍⬛

The Raven Society is a secret society at the Academy of Magic, known for its unconventional methods and mysterious members. While rumors paint them as dark and dangerous, they’re more focused on unraveling the secrets of magic than anything else. Each member is hiding a secret that will have you questioning who the true villain of this story really is.

Author’s Note: I’m so excited to finally share the Raven Society with you all! These characters have been living in my head for years, and bringing them to life through writing and illustrations has been amazing. I can’t wait to share their Greek mythology-inspired love stories with you. There’s so much magic, mystery, and romance ahead! 😊🏛️🥀

📚 Book: Academy of Villains by Ever King

Learn More: Academy of Villains Series

[poppletonink]

Best Quotes From 'If We Were Villains'

"You can justify anything if you do it poetically enough."

"You can't quantify humanity. You can't measure it - not the way you mean to. People are passionate and flawed and fallible. They make mistakes. Their memories fade. Their eyes deceive them."

"I don't know, it's like I look at you and the sonnets make sense. The good ones, anyway."

"Do you blame Shakespeare for any of it?" The question is so unlikely, so nonsensical coming from such a sensible man, that I can't help but suppress a smile. "I blame him for all of it."

'She says, “Were you in love with him?” “Yes,” I say, simply. James and I put each other through the kind of reckless passions Gwendolyn once talked about, joy and anger and desire and despair. After all that, was it really so strange? I am no longer baffled or amazed or embarrassed by it. “Yes, I was.” It’s not the whole truth. The whole truth is, I’m in love with him still.'

'I need language to live like food - lexemes and morphemes and morsels of meaning nourish me with the knowledge that, yes, there is a word for this. Someone else has felt it before.'

'Below was the motto: Per aspera ad astra. I'd heard a variety of translations, but the one I liked best was Through the thorns to the stars.'

"We cracked up. [...] But we didn't really shatter until we were all back together again."

'The clock on the mantel struck twelve, and we stirred, one by one, like seven statues coming to life.'

'Actors are by nature volatile - alchemic creatures composed of incendiary elements, emotion and ego and envy. Heat them up, stir them together, and sometimes you get gold. Sometimes disaster.'

[ariasmontage]

something for the mind, something for the body

[thereviewverdict]

it's me, my 17 personalities, 228 playlists and 479 unread books against the world

[nejjcollectsbooks]

“Book collecting is an obsession, an occupation, a disease, an addiction, a fascination, an absurdity, a fate. It is not a hobby. Those who do it must do it.”

― Jeanette Winterson

[papenathys]

Hey Mimi do you have any recommendations for books set in Latin America (any genre) ?

So I am going to assume that you are not asking for picks like Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Isabel Allende. Most of the Latinx authors I read are unfortunately fantasy or genre fiction set in the USA (I'm trying to remember if Tehlor Kay Mejia or Anna-Marie McLemore wrote a book that is explicitly set in a Latin American country.)

Here are a couple of books I enjoyed, or at least feel confident recommending based on what I remember:

Certain Dark Things by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (adult, urban fantasy, horror): Described by the author as a "violent neo-noir", this story is set in an alternate, gritty Mexico City, and follows a Tlāhuihpochtli vampire who strikes a bond with an impoverished street kid, while fleeing from narco-vampire clans, criminal gangs, and other dangers lurking in the dark underbelly of the city.

Gods of Jade and Shadow by Silvia Moreno-Garcia (adult, historical fiction, fantasy): In 1920s Mexico, a young woman accidentally frees the spirit of the Mayan God of Death, and embarks on a cross-country mission with him: from the dazzling Jazz Age opulence of Mexico City, into the darkness of the Mayan underworld– where she must face great dangers to reinstate the God on his rightful throne.

Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia** (adult, historical fiction, horror): A glamorous, fun-loving socialite in 1950s Mexico receives a disturbing letter from her married cousin, prompting her to travel down to their ancestral mansion, where the in-laws' live. There, on that ancient, colonial estate, she begins to be haunted by an equally ancient evil, and soon realises something is terribly wrong about the family her cousin has married into.

Tender is The Flesh by Agustina Bazterrica** (adult, dystopia, horror): In a near-dystopian future, an infectious virus turns all animal meat poisonous and unfit for consumption, forcing governments to legalize the factory-farming, breeding and eating of human meat. At one such processing plant, a worker is faced with a moral dilemma when he is gifted a "live" specimen.

Elena Knows by Claudia Piñeiro (adult, psychological thriller): Set in Argentina, this is a claustrophobic, uneasy novella about a mother's journey to uncover the truth behind the hushed-up murder of her dead daughter; the investigative mission, however, is made difficult by her advanced locomotive disability and age, as well as by this slowly unfurling realization: that she may not have known her daughter as truly as she thought.

And a couple I have not read/read and did not enjoy at all, but would recommend because my opinion seems to be in the minority:

Jawbone by Mónica Ojeda** (adult, horror, thriller, LGBTQ): A group of wealthy teenage girls attending an elite academy in Ecuador begin to convene regularly in an abandoned building, after school hours– but what started out as a place to exchange ghost stories, soon devolves into a site of dangerous thrill-seeking and dark, bloody rituals. (Note: I absolutely despised it, but you may enjoy; it's sapphic dark academia with cosmic horror and yellowjackets vibes).

Our Share of Night by Mariana Enríquez (adult, horror, historical fiction, fantasy): Set partially during the years of Argentina's brutal military dictatorship, this novel follows a father and son on a road trip, trying to escape a death cult, who have committed unspeakable atrocities. I have not read this gigantic tome, but I really want to, I am a sucker for horror rooted in political/historical allegories.

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis (adult, historical fiction, LGBTQ): In 1977 Uruguay, a time when oppressive militia rule criminalized homosexuality as a dangerous transgression, five queer women discover an uninhabited cape, and claim the coastal sanctuary for themselves. Over years, it becomes their one safe haven, to be their true selves. Not read this, but it sounds strikingly similar to Last Summer at Bluefish Cove, one of my favourite queer stories of all time.

[ Note: All the stories are adult and given my inclination towards horror and psychological fiction, they are likely to be dealing with sensitive issues, but for the stories marked ** I very highly recommend checking trigger warnings ]