Back To School Books That Will Give Your Fall 2025 TBR Major Nostalgic Vibes

We may receive a commission on purchases made from links.

The coming of fall means back-to-school vibes are all around, and even if you've long since graduated, that jittery, fresh energy is still palpable. So if you're feeling nostalgic for that special time of the year, we've sourced the perfect back-to-school collection for your fall 2025 "to be read" list (TBR). There's something so poignant about the turn of the year when students fill their backpacks, sharpen their pencils, and track bus routes for their first days of class. Life is buzzing with hope, nerves, ambition, and possibility. We felt it all so keenly as new students, so it makes sense that we want to return to those emotions via the written word. 

Fall is an especially important time for bibliophiles. We've packed away our beach reads and are readying our bookshelves for a new season. Instead of sand between our pages, we're anticipating cozy stories and dark nights, perfect for curling up with something a little spooky. Book lovers everywhere understand the draw of fall reading and why it's different from any other bookish season. There are several special books from Read With Jenna's book club that give the ultimate fall vibes. There are also cozy reads from Reese's Book Club that give all the fall feelings. And there's some cozy fiction from the 2020s to get you in the mood for fall 2025. Book lovers know that it's all about fall, and what better way to embrace the new season than with some back-to-school stories? 

For those who crave a novel that combines the thrills (or terrors) of boarding school with magic, then Naomi Novik's "A Deadly Education" is the perfect back-to-school read. Certain elements of this novel, and the larger Scholomance trilogy, are similar to the "Harry Potter" world, so for those who miss the magic of Hogwarts, this is a great fix. However, Novik's novels are a little darker, following the genres of dark academia, horror, and fantasy. "A Deadly Education" follows the story of El, who attends Scholomance, a school for students with magical powers. However, the school has no teachers, and students are under constant threat of death. It's a back-to-school read with an edge.

The best part about Novik's novel is that fans can indulge in further reading with the two subsequent books in the series: "The Last Graduate" and "The Golden Enclaves." It's a fantastical coming-of-age story with the vibrant excitement of a magical school, and readers resonated with the back-to-school environment that the book offered. "I loved the setting (Scholomance — the place gifted teenagers go to learn how to survive against magic-seeking monsters). Of all the magical schools I've read about, ... this is one of the most unique," a happy reader wrote on Goodreads. "Naomi Novik weaves a refreshing take on the magic boarding school trope with masterful narrative pacing, unforgettable characters, and intricate world-building," another added. 

Donna Tartt's beloved "The Secret History" is set on the campus of a New England college, making it an ideal read for those craving some collegiate vibes. The novel is considered a modern classic, and checks off all the best genres for this kind of book, including dark academia, mystery, thriller, and a whole autumn mood. The novel focuses on the main character, Richard, who is eager to fit in with a small group of eccentric students and a classics professor who manages to charm them all. The novel takes a dark twist, and Richard must reconcile his obsession with aesthetics, beauty, and classical scholarship. 

The novel blew up on BookTok, with people creating their own clips of the imagined campus. The aesthetic is so powerful that it became a recurring theme when discussing "The Secret History." The responding reaction is full of dark libraries full of leather-bound books, foggy courtyards on brick college campuses, and dapper students dashing about in tweed, wool, and plaid. So for those craving that idyllic campus aesthetic, this is the novel for you. Fans of Tartt's novel chimed in on BookTok with their profound reactions to her college-based novel. "The way I'm never recovering from this book. How nice," one replied on an aesthetic video based on the novel. "This [...] book is devastating but amazing," another wrote. It's really all about the aesthetic. 

For those whose back-to-school fix would be sated by a romp around Oxford University, look no further than R. F. Kuang's novel "Babel." The novel features genres like historical fiction, dark academia, and magical realism. Set in the mid-19th century, this story centers around the main character, Robin Swift, an orphan who falls under the care of Professor Lovell in London. Swift trains in Latin, Ancient Greek, and Chinese, all to prepare for his enrollment at Oxford University's Royal Institute of Translation, nicknamed "Babel." Oxford is an incredible place for Swift, but he soon finds himself torn between England and his homeland, China, and the power that language and translations really have. 

BookTok was obsessed with "Babel," and many readers created aesthetic videos inspired by the novel, all of which showed a warm, sepia-toned college campus, dimly lit libraries, and students racing to class — what readers can expect from Kuang's novel. It's not just the back-to-school vibes that are so compelling; The novel itself is moving. When one fan created a video asking, "How long did it take for you to read Babel?" someone quickly commented, "More like, how long did it take you to get over [B]abel." It's the type of book that rocks readers to their core.

Simone St. James's back-to-school novel, "The Broken Girls," offers a school environment with a dark twist, so readers who love a little creepy energy in the fall will thoroughly enjoy this novel. Dubbed a horror and a mystery novel by Goodreads, "The Broken Girls" opens in Vermont in the 1950s at a boarding school called Idlewild Hall. It's a place for girls who've been largely abandoned by the rest of society, as they've been deemed unfit or unwanted. Townspeople believe that Idlewild Hall is haunted, and sure enough, one girl goes missing. The novel then jumps ahead to Vermont in 2014, where journalist Fiona Sheridan is determined to uncover the mystery of her sister's death. The circumstances around the tragedy don't add up for Sheridan; her sister's body was found in overgrowth around Idlewild Hall, and even though her boyfriend at the time was charged with her murder, Sheridan thinks there's more to the story. 

Readers will definitely get their fix for a boarding school atmosphere; it just might be of a darker ilk than some were expecting. Since the whole novel centers around the old, Vermont boarding house, it checks those back-to-school boxes, but with a suspenseful twist. Chilling, haunting, and paranormal, this novel is an addictive read. 

For those who miss learning about Shakespeare and who crave the sumptuous, tweed setting of a prestigious university campus, M. L. Rio's novel "If We Were Villains" is the perfect fall read. It's drenched in dark academia, telling the story of Oliver Marks, who was accused of murder and served ten years in prison, and Detective Colborne, who meets with Oliver to find out what really happened. The novel focuses on seven Shakespearean actors who attend Dellecher Classical Conservatory, who take their roles so seriously that they live out their characters off-stage. Serving up that idyllic college campus life, the novel offers firelight conversations, moody libraries, and young students eager to convince the world that they're real actors. 

The book is often compared to Donna Tartt's "The Secret History," so for those who loved that, "If We Were Villains" is a close comp. It's a mystery thriller, so it also has that spooky vibe going for it. The characters are such aesthetes that the whole novel is infused with their love of drama and their elite worship of classical scholarship. Readers on Goodreads absolutely adored it. "Dark academia is actually such a compelling and amazing genre to me, always, but Shakespearean drama is perhaps the best dark academia pick out there," one reviewer wrote of "If We Were Villains." Many reviewers noted an increased interest in Shakespeare himself after reading,so this novel clearly offers academic tutelage and fervor.

We chose these books based on several stringent modes of criteria. For one, each novel had to offer a clear, academic setting. Every novel on our list, therefore, centered around an educational institution, so that readers looking for this vibe would be satisfied with the books. Some novels offered the dark academia genre, while others offered a more cheerful scope of academic life. Regardless, all of the books we selected had a storyline of characters returning to school. 

To make sure that the books we chose were really excellent reads, we sourced audience reactions to them. Each book on our list earned four stars or higher on Goodreads. The only exception was Naomi Novik's "A Deadly Education," which earned a 3.94. However, the Scholomance series as a whole earned a whopping 4.52 stars on Goodreads, and since "A Deadly Education" is the first of this trilogy, we felt it earned its place in our list. And for readers who love trilogies, it was a gripping introduction to a back-to-school series. We sought out a well-rounded recommendation list, with some novels offering magic and fantasy, and others serving up literary fiction, creating settings that were true to life.