Recs if you like The World Cannot Give...

campuses, the occult, a bacchanalia or two. only true dark academia in this list 🍂🚬☕️

in progress

Basically, a huge list of every book I ever heard features sapphic characters.

I have not read all of these, so I cannot be sure of the amount of the time on page of the sapphic characters or of the quality of the books.

Some of these I do not plan to read at all, since they are not my style. If you feel like a book doesn't belong here, let me know.

For my favs / read, check out my other lists & shelves.

Open to suggestions for more titles.

Don't shoot the messenger.

dark academia books with queer and trans MCs

Books that are just as good as the cover promises. AKA: Fantastic book covers that also happen to be fantastic books! List will be added to in the future because I can’t leave well enough alone. (Suggestions welcome, leave it in the comments.)

Healthy, mutually respectful relationships. JK, picture the exact opposite of that and then throw in three cups of lyrical, haunting bleakness.

Inspired by Autostraddle's Queer Books Across America list

Women pushing the boundaries of what’s acceptable in pursuit of their urges and desires. They’re behaving badly, unconventionally, and selfishly. Some are violent, some are horny, some are traumatized, some are angry—but all of them are finally acting for themselves.

An expansive list born out of combination of feminine rage, weird girl lit, “good for her”, women vs the void, monstrous feminine, and everything in between. Books written by women, trans, and nonbinary authors only.

Most popular or most read books set at a boarding school.

Only the first book of a series will be added.

We are NOT* rooting for things to work out with these queer characters/relationships, but we love to read about them anyway because we've all been there. Well, maybe not to the extremes depicted in these books, but it's those extremes that make art a safe place for us to explore the dark parts of our histories and ourselves.

*Or maybe we are rooting for them but we know we shouldn't be 😳

Includes dark academia, fantasy, and literary fiction--but takes place on a campus or in some way relates to student/teaching life.

yeah it’s cliche but i do like a lot of these books. both books that fit the dark academia genre and books dark academics would read.

literary fiction + dark academia