🕯📖 Reading Dark Academia Books for a Week (& lots of bonus recommendations!) 🕰💀

a lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee is another great option this is why a takes place at a college again all of the Vibes academic setting morally great characters Darkness mystery Secrets all of the main pillars of dark Academia are in this book

I found the book intellectual really stimulating the ideas were so interesting and so well presented like I said the lens through which we're viewing these ideas is so fascinating but it just didn't hit home as a human story for me

another one that is very polarizing again very strange never really know what's real and what's not that's something I love in a book when it's done well and I believe it was very well done in bunny

this is another one that's quite polarizing people seem to love it or hate it I loved it is very weird and you don't necessarily always know what's happening but that's part of the fun

again it totally has those Gothic dark Vibes and two of the main characters are doctors or scientists so it still has that academic leaning and many of the conversations between those two characters specifically do feel very academic in nature I just feel like it's a perfect read for spooky season of course but also dark Academia season

next I want to mention Frankenstein by Mary Shelley not 100 technically dark Academia I suppose because again not taking place at a university but our protagonist Dr Frankenstein is a scientist and the whole book is centered around a scientific experiment gone wrong or not gone wrong depending on your perspective I suppose

this has all of the elements of a great dark Academia read it's mysterious it's horrifying it has such complex unreliable unlikable characters and there are really three narratives intertwined in this book

as a theater school graduate and a lover of Shakespeare I could relate too hard to too much of this book I loved it has all of the dark Academia Vibes if you haven't read it and you're a fan of dark Academia truly what are you doing

another great option is one that I just finished in my dreams I hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead this book has two intertwining timelines both of which take place on University campus again we have ethically gray characters we have a mysterious murder we have secrets and love lies totally dark Academia

this was not my favorite book of all time I did want to mention it because it does really have dark Academia Vibes it does have that academic setting the darkness and the mystery and the characters that are a little hard to root for

this is fantasy so there is Magic but it is 100 dark Academia Vibes it is a school setting lots of Darker themes morally gray characters and ethical quandries all those things that we love to see in dark Academia even though this book has been hyped to death on the internet I think it's still worth a read

for me the bookkeepers was a great experience to read I really enjoyed it I am glad that I went ahead and read it anyway despite the bad reviews I started to hear because for me this was fantastic so I give the book eaters five game boys out of five

the starless Sea and the night circus one thing I'll say about these is that they tend to be very polarizing you're either going to love them or hate them I adore them but if you're not into the idea of a book that has very little plot but a whole lot of Vibes you're probably not going to enjoy these two

one of my favorite Classics really interesting intelligent characters a mysterious dark and morally questionable Central character murder and mystery Oscar Wilde is a genius so if you haven't read any of his work and even if you have but you haven't read this one yet please do

the secret history totally lived up to the height I had a grand time reading it to be honest and I give it five ancient Greeks studying disgustingly wealthy and deeply pretentious college students out of five

the whole plot surrounds a mysterious author and a one-of-a-kind book with mystery and murder and arson and destruction all taking place in 1940s Barcelona this book just has every single one of the Vibes

the starless Sea and the night circus one thing I'll say about these is that they tend to be very polarizing you're either going to love them or hate them I adore them but if you're not into the idea of a book that has very little plot but a whole lot of Vibes you're probably not going to enjoy these two

speaking of Classics that shine a light on men doing ill-advised experiments The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde you have that Gothic literature influence you have the darkness the moral quandries the ethical dilemmas violence and mystery and then also that scientific element of the whole experimentation thing

once we got to part two I was completely hooked and the rest of the book for me was super fast-paced heart pounding just completely immersive I read the last portion of the book so quickly I did not want to put it down I absolutely loved it and I recommend it to anyone who likes a good weird incomprehensible dark story in an academic setting

I have very mixed feelings because on the one hand like I said it really evoked such strong emotions in me which to me is the indication of an effective work I think the ideas it explored are interesting and it was done in a very Vivid way but I didn't enjoy the process of reading this book pretty much for even one moment