5 Of The Best Adult Fiction Books Set At A School

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Whether you have school-age kids or your own scholastic schedule, you're probably pretty eager to exit the classroom. With the stress of final exams looming and beachier concerns beckoning, a dark academia novel may be the last thing you want to throw into your summer tote. However, there are advantages to indulging in an on-campus read during the off-campus months. Your school year will definitely seem better in comparison to the dramatic events on the page, and you might even find yourself looking forward to the fall.

The problem for adult readers looking for a scholarly setting, however, is that so many of them are written for a young adult audience. That's not to say that there are no YA books that adult can enjoy, but it's okay to want the type of intrigue and action usually hidden from innocent eyes, too. Fortunately, some of the most acclaimed academic stories were written for adults.

You know those secret societies at Ivy League and British universities that are always spoken about in hushed tones, but mostly just amuse themselves with vaguely occult-ish hijinks? In Leigh Bardugo's "Ninth House," the occult element is much more real — and dangerous. It follows Galaxy "Alex" Stern, a Yale student with the ability to see ghosts, who is recruited by the most secret of the university's societies to monitor the school's other groups. Over the course of her duties, she's drawn to investigate the (apparently related) murder of a local woman.

"Ninth House" is the first adult novel by Bardugo, author of the massively popular "Shadow and Bone" young adult fantasy series, and she pulled no propriety punches. The book handles mature themes of violence, trauma, and drug use (let's just say it gives a whole new meaning to the term "magic mushrooms") as competently as any dark fantasy. It was named Goodreads Readers' Favorite Fantasy when it was published in 2019, and fans will be delighted to know that Bardugo has planned for at least a trilogy (the second part of which, "Hell Bent," was released in 2023). Who knew Yale was so graphically supernatural?

"Shakespeare in Love"? More like Shakespeare in hate. "If We Were Villains" by M.L. Rio begins with the impending release of Oliver Marks, a former actor at the Dellecher Classical Conservatory who was convicted of the murder of one of his fellow Bard-obsessed students 10 years earlier. The rest of the narrative traces the sequence of events that led up to the murder — an unexpected reversal of actual roles resulting in a vicious web of rivalries — and its far-reaching consequences.

If drama was your favorite class, this is the book for you. Rio admits that she "ransacked Shakespeare's entire oeuvre with giddy abandon," liberally peppering the dialogue between the characters with quotes from his works. The story's themes of the significance of the parts we play will prove fascinating to anyone who has ever stepped onstage — even if it has been a while. But a theatrical background is hardly a requirement; those who grew up on Agatha Christie will also appreciate the mystery of whether Oliver is actually guilty.

The subtitle of R. F. Kuang's "Babel" is "The Necessity of Violence," so you know right away that this novel is intense. Its second subtitle, "An Arcane History of the Oxford Translators' Revolution," sets it squarely in academia (as does the existence of a second subtitle). It's about a fantastical alternate reality of 19th century England, where the untranslatable concepts in different languages is the currency that powers colonialism. Quite literally, the words enchant the silver bars that the economy depends on. And when the student at the institute identifies those words and learns that their work requires exploitation, he must reconsider his role in society and whether it should exist at all.

No one could mistake "Babel" for a children's book. Aside from the political complexities that would fly over the heads of most youngsters, this 2022 nominee for Goodreads Readers' Favorite Fantasy is downright crunchy from the dry language of its characters' dialogue and endless footnotes. In other words, it's the perfect academic read.

Donna Tartt is the queen of dark academia, and it all started with 1992's "The Secret History." The weighty tome chronicles the relationships between a tight-knit and secretive group of students hand-picked to study classics under professor Julian Morrow at Hampden College. When the students' interest in the more Dionysian aspects of Greek society takes a deadly turn, they're initially united even further in their paranoia and vigilance — but eventually torn apart by it.

If that sounds like a mashup of the secret societies of "Ninth House" and inter-student strike of "If We Were Villains," that's no coincidence. "The Secret History" is considered the foundational text of the dark academia genre, and there are few university stories that don't take inspiration from it in at least some sense. From its debut on the bestseller list to its BookTok ubiquity, it's the rare title that has remained entrenched in the public mind.

As you can see, most books for adults set in schools can get pretty grim; so if you're looking for something a little cozier, try TJ Klune's "The House in the Cerulean Sea." In this sort of "X-Men" meets "Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children," a case worker at the Department for Magical Youth is tasked with investigating a boarding school on a far-flung island, which just so happens to be educating the young Antichrist. When he discovers that good and evil isn't so black and white — and that he has more in common with the school's headmaster than he ever imagined — he must reconsider his convictions, both emotional and official.

This 2020 nominee for Goodreads Readers' Favorite Fantasy may be less intense than other titles, but that doesn't mean it wears kid gloves. It never shies away from the realities of the abuse that the magical youth are at risk of experiencing, nor the romance that develops between its leads. "The House in the Cerulean Sea" is a top-rated campus novel for adults not despite its lack of shock value, but precisely because the story is so strong that it doesn't need it.

In order to craft this list, we searched Reddit and Goodreads for recommendations of books written for adult audiences that took place in schools, paying special attention to repeat recommendations. We sorted the recommended titles by average Goodreads review score, excluding any with fewer than 1,000 ratings to ensure a wide sample size. After confirming that none were categorized as young adult fiction, we selected the five top-rated titles.