“It’s Complicated.”

Women, they have minds, and they have souls, as well as just hearts. And they've got ambition, and they've got talent, as well as just beauty. I'm so sick of people saying that love is just all a woman is fit for. I'm so sick of it.

[Almost crying] 

 But I'm so lonely...

Jo March little women

when the Donna Tartt; dark sweaters and short skirts; lace tights and mary jane’s; ink stained fingertips and scribbled notes in the margins; Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and M.L. Rio’s If We Were Villians; writing in a spiraled notebook; lectures on Rome and Religion; starts to resurface in your psyche

“And sometimes I have kept my feelings to myself, because I could find no language to describe them in.”

- Jane Austen

cancelling Shadow and Bone right before they were going to do the Ice Court Heist and with a WHOLE SEASON of Six of Crows fucking WRITTEN AND READY TO GO is evil incarnate netflix you deserve to go out of business forever

“Oh to be loved by a writer…written about endlessly, ardently, passionately…”

- William Shakespeare, Hamlet

“Forget thus the nature of men, for love makes fools of the hands it holds/ Think not the torment that comes from kissing the thorns/ For a rose is often scornful before it is adored.”

- the play i’m currently writing <3

“I wanted to feel loved without feeling like I was begging for it.”

-unknown

The Ultimate Dark Academia Book Recommendation Guide Ever

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

deciding which book on my mountainous TBR to read next is a very specific kind of torture