Katherine Harbour's Blog - Posts Tagged "dark-academia"

Neverworld Wake
Because I love this author's other books, I was excited about this one. Her characters are complex, the writing just as lyrical.
Beatrice, a college student,is recovering from the mysterious death of her boyfriend Jim. When she visits Jim's four friends--the beautiful Whitley, sarcastic Kipling, Type A personality Connor, and brainy Marina--they become involved in a car accident.
They all survive. But the day becomes strange and they realize they're trapped in time, forced to live the day over and over again until they can vote as to which one of them survives the car accident that, as a mysterious man tells them, kills all of them but for one.
Beatrice must figure out how to escape this hell as her friends' darkest secrets are revealed and this world becomes their playground. The result is a dark fantasy with elements of mystery and horror, vividly written and one of the best I've read.

Ninth House
Galaxy Stern has had a violent and uncertain life, a life which ended with a series of murders that she survived. When she's offered a chance to attend Yale and better herself, she takes it, and is introduced to the Houses of the Veil the secret societies that practice magic for the benefit of the elite. She has joined House Lethe, a sort of police for the other Houses. Her tutor is Darlington, a charming and solitary young man, a gentleman scholar, who is only present in flashbacks. We don't learn until later what terrible fate has befallen him. It is this intriguing mystery, and Alex's determination to solve the murder of a girl she doesn't know, that drive the narrative. Alex is the very definition of an antihero. She's selfish and dark-hearted. But she's also a survivor, with wounds that haven't healed. She's basically a double-edged sword. As she navigates her way through the dead--who are both benevolent and horrifying--and fights her way to answers, another layer of mystery is revealed. A page-turner of a dark fantasy.

Bunny
Samantha attends a creative writing program at a distinguished college in a bad neighborhood haunted by an urban legend--an ax murderer. Her best friend reminds her of a female David Bowie and is awesomely cynical.
Then there are the Bunnies, a blonde clique of girls Samantha nicknames Duchess, Cupcake, and Creepy Doll. They're self-involved and whimsical in a bad way, but their writing scenes are hilarious. Samantha soon learns they are sort of a coven who turn rabbits into young men--whom they gruesomely dispatch with an ax if the transformation goes awry.
Samantha meets a mysterious young man whom she assumes to be the rabbit she attempted to turn and the story becomes a lovely dark fairy tale.
The first part of this novel is horror with a dash of humor, but the second part is a heartbreaking tale of college life and seeking to belong. A glorious dark academia and one of my favorite reads.

Vita Nostra
A dark academia in the weirdest sense, set in a strange little town in Russia, at the Institution of Special Technologies.
Sasha is a teenage girl when she encounters a strange man who tells her to perform certain eccentric tasks or her loved ones will suffer. Each time she finishes, she vomits gold coins that eventually get her into the Institution.
Once there, Sasha and other students undergo a rigorous and bizarre series of lessons. The teachers are strict. Sasha makes friends with the son of the man who began all of this.
Sasha must navigate the usual college travails of growing up, exams, and relationships, as the Institution's tests change her in strange and terrifying ways.
For fans of dark academia and the New Mutants.

The Physick Book of Deliverance Dane
10 Reasons Why I Liked this Book

1) Witchcraft in 1600s Massachusetts
2) Dual stories in different timelines
3) Sam the steeplejack
4) A dash of dark academia, as Connie, the young woman who is the MC, is finishing her thesis at Harvard
5) Magic
6) Historical detail
7) The smolder between Connie and Sam
8) Ancestral connection
9) The New England setting
10) An intriguing mystery