The Unofficial Dark Academia Book Ranking

Can you feel that? It’s the crisp wind of fall, or maybe the breeze from a figure stalking across campus in a long overcoat. Hear that? Just a group of students speaking Greek to each other, or perhaps discussing a weekend bacchanal. What’s that? Something about ferns? Was an invitation to have a gathering at a ravine slipped under your door? If you’re starting to think what I’m thinking, you’d be correct — it’s dark academia season.

If you’re a person of culture (someone who frequents Tumblr and/or TikTok), you may have seen posts displaying the dark academia aesthetic. I-D says,

“The aesthetic is listening to Chopin on vinyl, while curled up with a book -- likely by the Beats or Baudelaire -- in dim candlelight, whilst sipping a cup of tea. It’s bringing a sketchbook to the museum and musing over ancient statues, drawing the furrowed brow and soft lips. It’s wearing turtlenecks with overpriced Barbour jackets and houndstooth trousers, complete with shiny Oxfords, to give the illusion of a brooding scholar who has an acceptance letter to Brown. Essentially, it’s living like a moody YA character who drinks whiskey while writing essays just because his favorite author did the same.”

Yes, but let’s dig deeper. This description covers the “academia” portion well (read: pretension), but what about the “dark”? While the dark academia aesthetic’s moody reading list of choice is composed mainly of poetry and gothic classics like Frankenstein and Wuthering Heights, the origins of the aesthetic stem from a different set of books, ones set on college campuses composed of the filthy rich and morally grey.

Book Riot, in a piece aptly titled The Scholarship of Sexy Privilege, calls dark academia books “a subgenre of sinister literary fiction. They promise dastardly deeds done under the light of the moon, dusty library avenues packed with forbidden knowledge, and an overwhelming sense of poetic sexiness.”

As it happens, my first foray into dark academia happened two years ago, and I’ve been obsessed ever since. I’m sure there were some signs (I’ve always loved a good murder mystery, and I will literally read anything set at a boarding school), but upon entrance to the world of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, I knew I’d never look back.

That is why I, a self-proclaimed dark academia expert, have come to bring you my ranking of all the dark academia books I’ve read to date, judged by how well they fit within nine different categories:

• Academia - These books are all involved with education in some way. What they do with that involvement is what matters.

• Pretension - I love a good pretentious character/story element. Maybe it’s because I am annoying. Extra points if you didn’t know about the moon landing!

• Hedonism - When I say filthy rich, I mean that. Show me the extravagance, people!

• Crimes - If you’re not entangled in anything slightly illegal, why are you listed as dark academia?

• Central Friend Group - Seriously, I want to get a sense of who all the fuss is about. What group would you kill to be in? And I mean that literally.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider - Yeah, it’s a trope, but if you lean into it, it’s fun! It’s a self-insert. It’s basically the Y/N of the story.

• Gay undertones - I will admit, these stories can be rife with queerbaiting, but homoeroticism can be a key player. It’s also interesting to note that many of these stories contain subtle commentary on the way that queerness is present in classic literature and poetry, but those in academia tend to be unwelcoming to those same people in reality. It makes these books much more complex.

• Ambiguity - In the sense of morals, in the sense of endings. You don’t just read a book, you discuss and analyze it to the bitter end!

• Personal Enjoyment - The wild card! Don’t get it twisted, my feelings are really what get to determine this ranking.

For the purposes of not making you read hundreds of pages, I’ve narrowed down my list of books to exclude classics and YA. Sorry, guys. Let’s get into it. Some spoilers ahead.

7. The Truants by Kate Weinberg

Quick summary: Narrator Jess wants to escape her doldrums home life for the University of East Anglia, where Lorna Clay, her favorite author and Agatha Christie enthusiast, teaches. There she meets Georgie, Alec, and Nick, and they cavort and debauch around campus. But Jess is falling for Alec, the South African journalist who is dating Georgie, and he has ~secrets~. Jess is also enticed by and curious about Lorna, and accompanies her on a trip to her writing house on a perilous cliff in Sicily. Jess starts to wonder about the connection between Lorna and Alec (Romantic? Partners in crime?) which leads her down a path of disillusionment with adulthood and her college experience. Relatable.

• Academia: 5/10 - Jess is studying English, and the ties to Agatha Christie are important to the plot (the disappearance of Lorna, the emphasis on Christie’s personal life as a potential tie to Lorna’s), but the academia component is mainly focused on Lorna as a person, which was interesting as long as you were invested in the character.

• Pretension: 3/10 - Nothing enjoyably pretentious here, just Jess’ slight superiority complex and Alec as a person. (He drives a hearse. Don’t even get me started.)

• Hedonism: 2/10 - Besides one memorable scene involving the gang getting high in public, pleasure always played an unsmiling background role here.

• Crimes: 3/10 - The fact that Alec and Lorna were involved in a potential murder in Lorna’s Sicilian town was intriguing, but the results didn’t really deliver. Plus, Alec’s demise from an allergic reaction to a snake venom antidote (??) was incredibly random and sadly was not the result of any one character. Also, Alec just lied a lot and told Jess childhood stories that were actually his brother’s. Okay Alec.

• Central Friend Group: 2/10 - They were fun at first, but I never really felt the connection. Georgie, a slightly unhinged posh party girl, provided the riches, while Nick, a sweet, smart side character, dated Jess while she had eyes for Alec. They met at a party. They fell apart because Jess was chasing Alec and Alec was chasing Lorna. They were the ellipses at the end of a super boring sentence you didn’t want to read anyway.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider: 5/10 - We’re all outsiders when we go to college, and Jess is no exception (until she meets her barely formed friends). However, of all the characters, her evolution is the most interesting, and her confusion accurately matches our own. Plus, she reconciles with her family in what is a very Lady Bird-at-the-church-calling-her-mom way, which was satisfying.

• Gay undertones: 2/10 - Does Jess have a crush on Lorna? What is their relationship? These are questions that are thrown at us and never answered. Bye.

• Ambiguity: 4/10 - This ending was confusing as hell, so that’s why this is the rating. But the ambiguity of Lorna and Alec was frustrating enough to keep me reading, so there you go.

• Personal Enjoyment: 4/10 - Sigh. I gave this 3 stars on Goodreads, because while there were some elements that pulled me in, I never fell in love with the characters or storyline, and I felt that most of what Weinberg was saying had been said before, and less clunkily.

Overall Rating: 3.3/10 - Better luck next time. The one dark academia I couldn’t really love.

6. The Bellwether Revivals by Benjamin Wood

Quick Summary: Oscar works at an assisted care facility adjacent to Cambridge and ends up entangled with a posh but strange crowd a la Caroline Calloway. After listening to love interest Iris play the cello in a chapel on campus, he meets her protective and eccentric brother, organ-genius Eden, and their friends, Jane, Marcus, and Yin. Eden is obsessed with the idea that music can physically heal a person, and conducts exceedingly dark experiments to prove this point; a notable one being on his own sister after she breaks her leg in a bike crash. Oscar’s fave resident in the facility, a former Cambridge professor, has a “best friend” who wrote a psychological exploration of people with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, and Oscar is convinced Eden has it. What follows is a meandering path of characters trying desperately to change their ending before it's too late. Fun, right?

• Academia: 4/10 - Iris studies medicine, Eden is a musical genius, and Oscar just likes to read because plot twist - he doesn’t even go to Cambridge! I don’t really count the Tim Burton orchestra plotlines as academia, but I love the setting, so it’s getting a 4.

• Pretension: 7/10 - The pretension is practically a side character! Eden is obsessed with Johann Mattheson’s theories on how music can literally heal you, and these rituals that he holds consist of mood lighting, a reconstructed but very old organ, and his belief that he is the smartest person alive. Again, the setting is Cambridge. Oscar is constantly being looked down upon by people who think they’re way better than him.

• Hedonism: 4/10 - Not a strong showing, but it’s here, with one memorable scene of a very drunk Eden prowling around the room at an awkward dinner with his family and close friends, including Oscar. Not much to indulge in.

• Crimes: 8/10 - The illegality is very original, and I liked it! Not even Donna Tartt can say that she wrote a book based on a music student who lulls his “participants” to sleep with very specific musical arrangements, injures them, and then wakes them up to see if their musical arrangement will heal said injury.

• Central Friend Group: 4/10 - Besides the core 3 of Iris, Eden, and Oscar, the other members of this group didn’t stand out very much, and were really just set pieces for the main action. However, the dynamics between the core 3, with Oscar playing both sides and Iris caught between her love for her brother and her disgust with his crimes, made this group one worth investing in.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider: 5/10 - Oscar brings an interesting dimension to this story as a working class kid who isn’t pursuing a higher education, but he isn’t the most complex character. Also, he isn’t unreliable, he definitely knows what's up, and he actually takes action instead of letting himself get dragged into something from the sidelines. Not the best; not the worst.

• Gay undertones: 2/10 - Oscar’s professor friend and his professor “friend” Herbert had a secret relationship (or so Oscar suspects) when they were younger. This relationship drives Oscar to be able to reach out to Herbert and get information from him on NPD. This relationship drives the plot, but not much else.

• Ambiguity: 5/10 - What really went on in Eden’s head is never totally specified, and it kept me intrigued. Also, we as readers, through Oscar, are shut out of the most dangerous of his experiments, leaving things up to interpretation.

• Personal Enjoyment: 6/10 - While it dragged at some points, I thought this approach to dark academia was different and nuanced, and the book kept me invested enough to read quickly so as to find out the conclusion.

Overall Rating: 5/10 - A bit middle of the road, but I’d recommend this for fans of the genre, or even those who enjoy psychological thrillers, because in Eden’s case, we don’t have time to unpack all that.

I’m going to apologize in advance, because this is the point where these are about to get long, as all the books from now onward I’ve rated 5 stars on Goodreads (you should follow me on Goodreads). However, that doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed a 10/10 from this point forward.

5. Special Topics in Calamity Physics by Marisha Pessl

Quick Summary:In this long, twisting, dark academia noir saga peppered with literary and cinematic references and footnotes galore, protagonist Blue van Meer arrives at a prestigious private school in North Carolina where her dad is to be a professor. After being dragged from school to school, she’s finally glad to stay in one place for her senior year. There, she meets enigmatic film teacher Hannah and her cohort of hand-picked student followers, nicknamed The Blue Bloods. She then becomes entangled in their shiny secrets. In STCP, everything is connected, and you should take notice of literally every detail.

• Academia: 7/10 - Blue and her dad are the eccentric academic version of Rory and Lorelai, constantly dropping references between themselves for fun and honestly, to look better than everyone else. Blue is insanely smart and is “writing” this story from her dorm room at Harvard, where she is looking back at her time here. This story cannot be untangled from its academic setting, and that’s what pulls you deeper and deeper.

• Pretension: 10/10 - See above. As previously stated, I thrive off pretension in books, so I ate this one up. Open it up, I dare you.

• Hedonism: 5/10 - Blue never really gets in on this, but the Blue Bloods? All over it, and they often hold court at Hannah’s hobknobishly decorated house for wine nights. This is a group that likes to indulge, but they don’t make it a personality trait, because they’re too busy dealing with their own problems to organize Dionysus-inspired ragers.

• Crimes: 5/10 - It’s not like the group is out here committing crimes, but there are several that this story hinges on, including Hannah’s mysterious death on a camping trip, that turn this story into a thriller towards the end. I don’t know, Ms. Pessl could have at least put in a petty theft.

• Central Friend Group: 6/10 - Finally a group of consequence! Unfortunately, I didn’t remember much about them until I jogged my memory doing research for this ranking (I read it 2 years ago, okay!). Jade, Leulah, Milton, Nigel, and Charles round out the teens, and they really only become tight because of Hannah. Individually, they have moments of truth and intrigue, but in the end, as in most dark academia tales, they don’t maintain a connection with Blue after the action.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider: 10/10 - I loved Blue, and maybe it’s because I secretly want to be her, but her mix of undercover detective, uber-smart naivete, and restless teen really worked for me. Her perspective was the perfect vessel in which to tell this story. Her feelings are always palpable, and as a fellow quiet kid who used observation to my advantage, she was relatable. When her close relationship with her dad begins to shatter, Blue’s emotions carry us through the climax of the story and into the mind-bending conclusion. She is absolutely one of the best dark academic protagonists on a subjective scale, because she is written as a real person while still functioning representatively.

• Gay undertones: 1/10 - Pretty absent. Some in the friend group, but nothing of consequence.

• Ambiguity: 10/10 - Congratulations if you can conclude shit, because that ending… Hannah as a character… Gareth (the dad) as a character… Rest in peace to all the chicks whose ambiguity is dying to be like this book.

• Personal Enjoyment: 8/10 - This was a good book! It was unlike anything I’d read before, but also harkened back to books and genres I’ve loved growing up.

Overall Rating: 6.8/10 - I didn’t love everything, but its mysteries pulled me deep into its clutches, and I thought about it for weeks afterward. A staple of the dark academia genre.

4. The Likeness by Tana French

Quick Summary: Buckle up, because you’re going to have to suspend some disbelief for this one. Cassie is a detective with the Dublin Murder Squad who gets roped into a case when the body of a woman who looks exactly like her is found. The case is going nowhere, so her boss Frank enlists her to go undercover as Lexie, her doppelganger, to solve the case. Lexie lived in a big house in the country with 4 other Trinity students, Daniel, Justin, Abby, and Rafe, who are close friends who do everything together. Cassie’s job is to pretend to be Lexie, risen from a coma with memory loss, and force the suspect friend group to reveal who killed her. Easy, no? Well… no.

• Academia: 4/10 - It’s not a big deal here, depending on how you see it. Cassie has no idea what Lexie was studying, and that isn’t even really the main focus, so Trinity scenes are few and far between. However, academic concepts and theories do drive some of the plot. It’s just not as integral to the story as it could be.

• Pretension: 8/10 - These group members are pretty pretentious - they read Big Books every night by the fireplace and don’t fraternize with anyone outside their familial-like friend group. The house stands as a monument to their refusal to assimilate with the real world, and their studies are not those that would lead them to practical jobs.

• Hedonism: 6/10 - Cassie and the gang love themselves some alcohol and cigarettes, and that is emphasized by several long party scenes throughout the book, each a little more dangerous than the one before it. However, this isn’t really all for pleasure’s sake, so that’s why this rating is a little lower.

• Crimes: 9/10 - This book is centered around a crime! We’re trying to solve a murder here, people! This mystery is solved, thankfully, and it’s incredibly satisfying to read, because how often is the crime involving your doppelganger? Exactly.

• Central Friend Group: 10/10 - They’re so close and yet so shady! Each member has their own story and personality, and they feel like real people that you could have passed on the street. Daniel, Abby, Justin, and Rafe are all suspects, but some stand out more than others. Even the supposed villain had a fabulous reason for being that way, so much so that I was sympathetic. Oops! This is an enthralling group that holds your interest, repelling you while still making you want to be their friend.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider: 12/10 - Imagine writing a character who strikes the perfect balance between someone who is insanely smart but slowly can’t trust themselves anymore? Between someone who has to have one foot in the real world and one foot in an alternate reality? Someone who has to juggle their own messy life with someone else’s? Yeah, no other character comes to my mind either.

• Gay undertones: 4/10 - There was definite tension between Justin and Rafe, and Justin’s storyline included his sexuality, so there was more here than any of the previous books, but it fell to the background simply because of how many other plot threads were happening.

• Ambiguity: 9/10 - Yes, the central mystery is solved, and we can sit back and relax that we have concluded the plot, but what this book does so well is that it forces you to think about these concepts in your own life, and it makes you take a step back. Throughout the book, these amorphous concepts on life and work are presented, and you’re left to decide for yourself what they mean and how they apply to you personally. We don’t question the story, but we end up questioning ourselves, which is one of the reasons I love this book so much.

• Personal Enjoyment: 9/10 - I didn’t love every character, and sometimes the story dragged, but overall I loved this story, the way it was presented, and its new take on staple dark academic components. It dug into Irish history and small town violence, and it intertwined academia, economics, personal freedom, friendship, and chosen family. This is, like, objectively a good book.

Overall Rating: 7.8/10 - I would definitely read this again, and if you’re wanting something that fits the dark academia bill but takes it abstract, you need to pick this up.

3. Bunny by Mona Awad

Quick Summary: The quick summary is that there is no quick summary for this insane book. Protagonist Sam is an MFA writing student at Warren University, where she is trying to survive personally and creatively with her only friend, Ava. The others in her writing workshop? An eerily fascinating group composed of cavity-inducing girls, privileged and pretentious in their writing, obsessed with eating mini foods and wearing pastels. Oh, and they all call each other Bunny. Bunny! OMG Bunny! I love you forever! Want to go eat some mini cupcakes, Bunny? When Sam begins to get sucked into their world, she starts to lose her grip on reality right along with the audience. I can’t say much more than that, because this is a brand of wild that you have to experience for yourself.

• Academia: 10/10 - Oh, the satisfaction that this scathing indictment of academic self-seriousness and the creative writing process brings me. Satire is so, so sweet.

• Pretentiousness: 10/10 - The Bunnies host Smut Salons where they fawn over each other’s writing while blasting Kate Bush’s “Wuthering Heights” on repeat. Leader Duchess etches her poetry into glass with diamonds; she calls them proems. Vignette writes about herself entangled in terrible, violent situations badly, because she’s never experienced one. The Bunnies are obsessed with their writing, and they’ll go to great lengths to fuel their inspiration, to dig deeper. It’s scary, and it’s laughable.

• Hedonism: 7/10 - The Bunnies value pleasure of a different sort than most, but I won’t reveal that here. Aside from that, they definitely take candy-pink pills that are probably categorized under mind-altering substance on the reg. When they feed one to Sam, however, it’s like she’s on a weeks-long bad trip. Yikes.

• Crimes: 10/10 - They’re not regular crimes; they’re fun! The methods that the Bunnies use for personal and creative fulfillment can be described as, well, inhumane and suspect. Also, they would probably be on Abigail Williams’ hit list right up there with Goody Proctor.

• Central Friend Group: 8/10 - The Bunnies are unlike any friend group I’ve read - they’re insanely codependent, their hive mind mentality is very scary, and their individual quirks are so in-depth and interesting. But, however much we think we know about them, we don’t. Also, the relationship between Sam and Ava is pretty central, and matters more than the Bunnies, I’d say. We’ll get to that.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider: 9/10 - Sam is the ultimate unreliable narrator, because after a certain point, you really can’t trust her! She struggles to come to terms with her past, her present, and her undeterminable future, and the path her mind is on is a central component to the story. She isn’t my personal favorite character, but her perspective is such an interesting place to be.

• Gay undertones: 8/10 - Sam and Ava? Ava and Sam? Yeah. Sam is in love with her friend who helped pick her up from rock bottom, her beautiful friend who goes to tango class with her and knows her better than anyone else, even herself. She floats around campus like an apparition, always there when Sam needs her, until she’s not. The exploration of their dynamic and what it is, and what it means, is one of this book’s strongest elements in a sea of strong elements.

• Ambiguity: 12/10 - Lol.

• Personal Enjoyment: 10/10 - It was frustrating and confusing at times, but I can’t stop thinking about this, and its utter hilarity juxtaposed with chilling horror, disorienting until the bitter end. It calls to mind a twisted Heathers and Mean Girls with an infusion of Donnie Darko and of course, The Secret History.

Overall Rating: 9.3/10 - If you read no other book from this list, read Bunny. It’s an amalgamation of everything a good book should be. Most people either love it or hate it, but I think it should be given cult-classic status.

2. If We Were Villains by M.L. Rio

Quick Summary: We’ve reached my top 2! Cheers to that!

Protagonist Oliver begins this book by telling the detective who worked his case that landed him in jail 10 years prior the whole story. And that story involves a group of seven third-year theater students studying Shakespeare at an elite conservatory in the middle of the woods. (See, that would have been all I needed to immediately purchase this book.) A murder of a fellow student that someone in the group may or may not have been responsible for shakes the theater department to its core and brings up the ugly secrets that these students have been hiding. Juicy!

• Academia: 10/10 - They’re theater students who do Shakespeare! Maybe I’m just enthralled by the performing arts, because I love to boost myself, but this element of the story is something that endeared me to it immediately. Especially the scenes describing the students’ performances of Macbeth on Halloween by the lake and Romeo and Juliet in a legitimate ballroom in the winter. It made me want to drop out of Belmont and enroll in RADA!

• Pretension: 10/10 - The squad literally speaks to each other in full-on Shakespeare dialogue. I ate that up so fast.

• Hedonism: 8/10 - Just the usual drunkenness, hidden substances, and alcohol-fueled acts. Putting the dark in dark academia!

• Crimes: 10/10 - We love a crime of passion! We love a good murder mystery! We love an environment where no one can trust anyone else! In addition to the central crime, these kids are criminal in various other ways, setting themselves up to all be the titular villains. There is no if, there is simply when.

• Central Friend Group: 9/10 - Okay, they could be better. It’s hard to create seven equally rounded and interesting characters, but this group is pretty close. Each member functions as a theater typecast. Their dynamics often revolve around their extreme closeness due to the vulnerability of a life on the stage and their hidden anger at the boxes they are supposed to fit in. They are a fascinating and ultimately relatable bunch.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider: 9/10 - Oliver is such a sympathetic character, but he is a little boring at points. We love him anyway. From a small town, with parents who don’t totally get or support his choice to pursue theater, and armed with his own doubts about his abilities, he is a little pathetic, but he should be familiar for most of us. He’s constantly confused about what he truly wants, and he always sits in the background until it really counts.

• Gay undertones: 9/10 - Oliver is in love with James, and their relationship is the emotional throughline of the book. Whether playing opposite each other in Macbeth, sharing a quiet moment backstage, or yearning from anywhere in the world, their relationship will tug on your heart and make you really care for these characters.

• Ambiguity: 9/10 - You’ll eventually figure out how and why everything went down, but that doesn’t mean that things aren’t left to ponder. Every character has an ambiguous nature, and you question the motives of everyone involved.

• Personal Enjoyment: 12/10 - I’ve read this book twice now, and I’ll probably read it again. Not sorry! This book has everything that I love in it, and it’s so satisfying to feel the tension build. It’s definitely one of my favorites and one that I’d highly recommend to anyone who wants to read more dark academia.

Overall Rating: 9.5/10 - Honestly don’t ever say anything bad about this book to me. If We Were Villains is dark academia done so, so right. Feel free to exit to the left if you don’t believe it!

1. The Secret History by Donna Tartt

Quick Summary: You knew it was coming. You knew where it would fall in this ranking. And if you didn’t, well, are we even friends?

Richard Papen, a loner from California looking to spice up his life, enrolls in the Classics program at Hampden College in Vermont, where he unwittingly falls into the most exclusive and exclusionary group on campus. Students Henry, Francis, Charles, Camilla, and Bunny, led by Classics professor Julian, are each singular people, surrounded by their apparent privilege, almost forced ignorance of the real world, and defined by their idiosyncrasies. They quickly and inevitably fall into disarray after the group murder of Bunny (this is in the prologue, so it’s not a spoiler). And it’s pure delight.

• Academia: 15/10 - Everything these people do is for and because of academia. They believe they are smarter, and therefore better, than anyone else on campus. They study Classics, and speak Greek and Latin to each other just because they can, and also so that no one else can understand them. A defining feature of this book is inspired by Greek god Dionysus. Donna expects you to keep up.

• Pretension: 20/10 - I have never read anything more pretentious in my life. Do you see why it’s in the #1 spot? Also, these students literally hold several bacchanals, as well as lounging around on the weekends in Francis’ uncle’s country home. They’re all analog, even though it's the 90s, and Henry genuinely did not know about the moon landing. I love it so much.

• Hedonism: 10/10 - You want it, they’ve got it. Also, Judy Poovey probably has it too. The indulgence! The insanity! It’s the getting drunk and running around in a field in white robes for me. It’s the getting high at your best friend’s funeral for me. It’s the constant whiskey glass in Charles’ hand for me. It’s the - you get the point.

• Crimes: 25/10 - If pushing your friend off a cliff under the guise that you were looking for new ferns to plant in your yard because he might have found out the details of your secret bacchanal that you purposefully excluded him from isn’t the perfect crime, I don’t know what is.

• Central Friend Group: 15/10 - Everyone in this group is wild, and I love it. Henry is the austere leader with a dark past and a casually cruel present. Francis will be your best friend, but he’s also the best friend of everyone else, so be careful about what you tell him. Charles is secretive, volatile, and close with his twin, Camilla, who is beautiful and mysterious, a functioning nod at how men write women. Bunny is just a mess; a would-be trust fund kid who spends everyone else’s money and is obnoxious for sport. But somehow, they fit perfectly together, if only for the duration of this story.

• Unreliable Narrator/Outsider: 10/10 - Richard is the perfect mix of both. His confusion and swaying morality are meant to mirror our own as we navigate the complexity of this story, and his status as the newest member of the group gives us a view that we wouldn’t otherwise have if he had been an established member. A poorer student amidst wealthy elites, Richard’s character helps bring to the story a commentary on class differences in education and everything else. His early 20’s ennui brings him to Hampden, where he, for a moment, gets to experience something he’ll never again come close to. Is it worth it? Through his eyes, we get to question this. One of my favorite sequences of the book occurs when Richard stays in Vermont over winter break, freezing and renting a “living” space in a warehouse. It’s great fun, except not to Richard.

• Gay undertones: 10/10 - Everybody is getting with everybody in this book. Francis can be himself with the group, but struggles with owning his identity with his family. Richard explores his sexuality with Francis, the person in the group he arguably is the closest with. Some of these moments are the only ones where we get genuine feelings from these characters.

• Ambiguity: 25/10 - You’ll literally never know what any of the characters are really thinking and feeling, except Richard. What does that final dream mean? What really even happened? That’s one thing Donna will never tell. Xoxo.

• Personal Enjoyment: Off the charts - It’s my favorite book of all time, and it has been for over 2 years. Yes, even over childhood favorites. It’s just so readable! It strikes the perfect balance between entertainment, its messaging, and literary fiction. It’s literally so good it hurts.

Overall Rating: 14.4/10 - READ. THIS. BOOK. You won’t be disappointed.

That’s all folks. Thanks for sticking with me, and I hope you read some of these books!