9 Of The Best Dark Academia Romance Books Ever Written

Effy Sayre is an architecture student obsessed with stories, and one story in particular, Angharad by Emrys Myrddin, has captured her attention for most of her life. When the opportunity to enter a contest to redesign the Myrddin estate comes up, naturally she leaps at it.

Upon arrival, she begins to realize that she has her work cut out for her, especially when she runs into the aggravating Preston Héloury, a fellow student who is threatening to discredit her favorite author’s legacy.

In her final year, Amelia Baston transfers to Ellis University, but completing her degree is the last thing on her mind—she’s here for answers. Her brother, Lincoln, dropped out after a car accident and has never been the same. On top of this, a girl she knew from high school has gone missing from the campus, yet everyone seems fine with moving on.

Amelia is on a mission to find out if these incidents are related in some way to the secret societies that riddle the university. Dodging cloaked figures and a very handsome, arrogant hockey star, Amelia needs to uncover the answers to the question at hand before she becomes the next missing girl.

The more she investigates this tangled web of secrets, the more she finds that it somehow keeps circling back to her family. Luckily, she has Logan, the perfect distraction (and bodyguard).

Devon Richards and Chiamaka Adebayo are students at the prestigious Niveus Academy. At opposite ends of the social hierarchy, they seemingly have nothing in common aside from the same ex-boyfriend and the fact they are two Black students in an overwhelmingly white school.

When they find themselves targeted by Aces, an anonymous gossiper who has both a major grudge and access to the phone numbers of the entire school, Devon and Chiamaka desperately need to work out who Aces is and put a stop to them. With an ever-growing list of suspects, this won’t be easy, but their determination grows as their future college acceptances are on the line.

In Nocticadia, Lilia is accepted into the exclusive Dracadia University, which is sequestered on an island with a disturbing past that haunts it to this day. For Lilia, this is finally a chance to study the disease that took her mother’s life: the Noctisoma.

Dr. Devryck Bramwell, also known as Doctor Death, is just the professor to help her with this, and it doesn’t hurt that he’s extremely easy on the eyes. Unfortunately for Lilia, he seems to take an immediate dislike to her, but this doesn’t stop her from trying to worm her way into becoming his lab assistant.

Andrew Perrault, his twin sister Dove, and their best friend Thomas are usually inseparable. Yet when they start their senior year at Wickwood Academy, Dove and Thomas aren’t on speaking terms, and Thomas is acting strange and evasive.

Thomas would often illustrate scenes from the morbid fairytales Arthur enjoys writing. Except even these stories don’t seem to inspire Thomas anymore. In an attempt to find out what’s behind Thomas’ behavior, Andrew decides to follow him into the forest one night, and that’s where he realizes that the monsters in Thomas’s illustrations are no longer confined to the page, and new ones appear every night. 

Thomas and Andrew are the only people standing in the way of the monsters going on a full-blown killing spree at school. Andrew would do anything for Thomas, but the monsters are only growing stronger. Just how far will Andrew go to protect Thomas?

When Kidan Adane joins Uxlay University to uncover information about her missing sister, June, she ends up living with Susenyos Sagad, a vampire who may actually be responsible for both the disappearance of June and the death of her family.

Kidan must save her sister without falling prey to Susenyos. If anyone is up to the task, it’s the rage-fueled and slightly unhinged Kidan. 

Nicole barely knew her mother, but even years after her death, her mother’s legacy is still keeping Nicole safe. Hidden in an art collection, her mother left an important message about The Wake, the government that keeps supernaturals in line—the same one that killed her mother.

Nicole must keep her identity as an Empyreal hidden right under the nose of The Wake’s best hunter, Kyan McCarter. If her identity is discovered, she’ll be his next assignment. It’s a difficult task that is made almost impossible when a painting is stolen and Nicole and Kyan have to team up to find the thief.

On an expedition to find a fabled spring that will hopefully advance her career, things quickly take a turn for the worst for Lorelei Kaskel when her mentor is murdered. Isolated as they are, the primary suspects are the five nobles accompanying her.

Each of the nobles has a possible motive, and Lorelei can only rule out one person—Sylvia von Wolff. The two must work together to survive the treacherous journey and find the spring before possibly getting murdered themselves.

Unfortunately, Sylvia and Lorelei have a long history as academic rivals, and they make for reluctant teammates. In cooperating, however, they might just discover that love and hate are two sides of the same coin…

The only survivor of a deadly excursion to the Dovermere sea caves, Emory finds herself with new and unprecedented powers. She has to learn how to control them while battling the grief of having lost her best friend, Romie. Luckily, there is one person she can turn to—Baz, her best friend, and Romie’s brother. He is one of the few people who can truly understand her grief.

When drowned students start washing up on shore alive before dying all over again, Emory and Baz need to figure out what’s going on and whether it has anything to do with a super-secret society hidden at the college.