The title of this post is clickbait. I, unfortunately, have not read every book ever. Not all of these books are particularly “dark” either. However, these are my recommendations for your dark academia fix. The quality of each of these books varies. I have limited this list to books that are directly linked to the world of academia and/or which have a vaguely academic setting.
Dark Academia staples:
The Secret History by Donna Tartt
If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio
Dead Poets Society by Nancy H. Kleinbaum
Vita Nostra by Maryna Dyachenko
Dark academia litfic or contemporary:
Bunny by Mona Awad
The Idiot by Elif Batuman
These Violent Delights by Micah Nemerever
White Ivy by Susie Yang
The Cloisters by Katy Hays
Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
The Lake of Dead Languages by Carol Goodman
A Separate Peace by John Knowles
Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates
Attribution by Linda Moore
Dark academia thrillers or horror:
In My Dreams I Hold a Knife by Ashley Winstead
The Maidens by Alex Michaelides
Ghosts of Harvard by Francesca Serritella
Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas
Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth
They Never Learn by Layne Fargo
The It Girl by Ruth Ware
Never Saw Me Coming by Vera Kurian
Dark academia fantasy/sci-fi:
Babel: An Arcane History by R.F. Kuang
The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake
Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo
A Lesson in Vengeance by Victoria Lee
The Starless Sea by Erin Morgenstern
Vicious by V.E. Schwab
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness
The Betrayals by Bridget Collins
Dark academia romance:
Gothikana by RuNyx
Alone With You in the Ether by Olivie Blake
Dark academia YA or MG:
Truly Devious by Maureen Johnson
A Deadly Education by Naomi Novik
Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé
The Raven Boys by Maggie Stiefvater
Legendborn by Tracy Deonn
Crave by Tracy Wolff
Wilder Girls by Rory Power
The Harry Potter series by J.K. Rowling
Dark academia miscellaneous:
My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell
Disorientation by Elaine Hsieh Chou
Alphabet of Thorn by Patricia A. McKillip
gotham is exactly the right amounts of wet and socioeconomically unstable to have spawned an INSANE grunge scene you just know their local shit is like the sonic equivalent of getting hit over the head with a car battery
forever obsessed with percy being weird. off-putting. strange even. a cryptid maybe. an urban legend if I may. my boy is the son of one of the oldest, most powerful gods, has been in FBI's records since the age of twelve, fought and won two wars against immortal beings, went to hell and back. I think he's allowed to be a little odd.
Oh to live in a weird little town with gloomy weather and strange weird sounds in the woods and hushed whispers about strange sightings and an alarming amount of hauntings and a concerning amount of eye motifs and a library with conveniently placed section for everything that's relevant to the mystery and cloaked figures sneaking around and the occasional uncanny person and weird notes and maps and books and stuff being found around the town and oh to live in a weird little town with a mystery
Adult Percy Jackson and Annabeth Chase are the most surreal power couple in the mortal world.
Annabeth Chase, world renowned architect who was entrusted with repairs and renovation on the Empire State Building…
…and her husband, this guy who was wanted by the FBI for blowing up the St Louis Arch seventeen years ago
Band!Whump
Whumper's an obsessed fan of Whumpee that refuses to stop harassing/following them from gig to gig. This causes Whumpee to be terrified of performing live.
Whumpee getting hit with an object from the audience and getting pretty hurt. Caretaker doesn't even hesitate to throw a set piece RIGHT back at the assailant.
Singer!Whumpee that loses their voice and needs to be monitored/cared for by the band to make sure they don't push themselves too far.
A Whumpee that's super anxious about a show and just can't stop crying backstage about how they can't do it, don't make them do it. Too bad Manager!Whumper doesn't care.
Whumpee playing at a local basement gig and getting too intoxicated/drugged by Whumper. Does the band notice and get them out of there in time?
A Whumpee that can't play their instrument for an important performance due to injury. They're frustrated and feel like a complete burden to the rest of the band.
Feel free to add more!
i feel like the paparazzi should have had a bigger role in hoo. i mean since piper was the daughter of one of the most biggest actors in hollywood and percy is one of the america's most wanted, both of them on a suspicious cruise ship with some other mysterious people causing random chaos everywhere should have caused a little bit of hysteria among the media.
for one, i feel like it would add a lot of humour and chaos. imagine every dinner or lunch scene on the argo II starting with a funny update of what the newspaper has to say about their new globetrotting adventure. imagine the paparazzi reminding percy more about his life ("mr. jackson, are you going to explode another monument?!" "bestie what r you talking about?"). imagine every fight scene being interrupted by people asking questions.
but imagine the angst potential too. imagine the paparazzi affecting piper's arc of figuring herself out. and the additional pressure she feels to maintain this relationship with jason. imagine percy and annabeth falling into tartarus because the flashing lights prevented the rest of the seven from getting to them on time. imagine all the mental breakdowns on camera. imagine them worrying that sally and grover would see everything on tv.