Get back into an academic vibe with these books perfect for the start of the school year
Gates Annai (they/she) // Literature Editor
- The Defining Decade: Why your Twenties matter—and how to make the most of them now – Dr. Meg Jay, PhD
This non-fiction book is all about making the most of your 20’s, and ensuring success later in life based on the choices you make now. With three sections; Work, Love, and the Brain and the Body, you can start your school year jumping in with both feet in all sections of your life.
Pick up a copy for yourself or some friends on Amazon from $25.80 used, or Indigo for $25.99.
- Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow – Gabrielle Zevin
Friends and video game designers Sam and Sadie dream up and create their blockbuster game, Ichigo, before they even graduate Harvard. They become an overnight sensation, with all the privileges and joys that come with it, but also the dangers and heartbreaks. This novel spans thirty years of connection between Sam and Sadie who are at once more than friends but never quite lovers, and the young adult experience of struggling for identity. Slow moving but captivating.
Indigo has your copy for $24.95!
- Bunny – Mona Awad
Graduate student Samantha is an outsider among her beautiful and preppy classmates, who call each other “Bunny” and are inseparable in and out of the classroom. When Sam is invited to a “Smut Salon,” an annual party the Bunnies throw to share erotic works they’ve written, she gets caught up in a sinister yet saccharine world that blurs the edges of her reality until she’s entwined with the Bunnies. Before she knows it, she’s participating in their dark off-campus rituals. Gory, twisted, and weird but totally gripping from cover to cover, this is a great book for fans of The Secret History or Heathers.
Available at Indigo for $23.
- The Rachel Incident – Caroline O’Donoghue
The Rachel Incident follows Rachel and her best friend and unrequited love James through their topsy-turvy young lives of love, fun, heartbreak, and identity. Queer, funny, and heartbreaking, this book is a coming of age for those trying to find their feet in their early twenties, and how complicated the seemingly “best years of your life” can be.
On Indigo for $24.95
- The Little Book of Calm – Paul Wilson
This nonfiction self-help book is perfect as a pocket companion, encouraging the reader to slow down, regain balance, and manage stress in healthy and helpful ways. Perfect for the university student who sometimes needs to be reminded to take a breath and a moment amidst busy lives of homework, classes, and jobs.
Grab yours on Amazon for $12.55
- Come and Get It – Kiley Reid
A residential assistant gets entangled in the unruly dramas of a professor and three students when all she wants to do is graduate and buy a house. Messy and tense but funny and strange, this book can feel like an unscripted reality show, where the reader witnesses lives and dramas unfold in an unrealistic but undoubtedly interesting alternate world.
On Indigo for $39.99 or Amazon for $32.70.
- The Truants – Kate Weinberg
For fans of The Secret History, The Truants follows a college student who becomes entangled in the mystery of her enigmatic professor and drawn into her dark life. If you’re looking for dark academia vibes and are a lover of murder mysteries but have already read The Secret History like five times, The Truants is the perfect next read for you.
Grab your copy from Indigo for $23.00.
- The Female Persuasion – Meg Wolitzer
Join shy Greer Kadetsky from her adolescence to her late twenties as she’s mentored and forever changed by Faith Frank, a women’s rights activist. Taking place in the 90’s to the early 2000’s, this book covers a broad range of feminist discourse while reflecting on womanhood, the people and relationships that change us and the course of our lives, and becoming who we were meant to be.
Indigo has it for $23.00
- Real Life – Brandon Taylor
Wallace is an outsider in his Midwestern university town as a black and queer man. At school, he leaves his family behind but still can’t escape his childhood, and holds a sizable distance between himself and his group of friends. Then his life is turned upside down over the course of one weekend, revealing long-simmering hostilities, secrets, and desires within his school community.
Grab it off Indigo for $24.95
- The Incendiaries – R. O. Kwon
Friends, Phoebe and Will both have deep secrets they keep from one another, and still-lingering heartbreaks that draw them to ruin. Grappling with the loss of her mother, Phoebe is enchanted by a religious group which quickly reveals itself to be an extremist cult tied to North Korea and Phoebe’s Korean-American family. After the cult is responsible for numerous deaths and Phoebe disappears, Will hunts her down looking for the truth of who she really is, and unable to get past his obsessive love for her.
Indigo has paperbacks for $24.95