If you liked The Secret History, you’ll love these five dark, literary campus novels

If you’re anything like me, finishing The Secret History leaves a strange kind of void. Donna Tartt’s literary debut is one of those once-in-a-decade novels: intellectually rich, psychologically intense, and impossible to put down. 

It’s a story steeped in atmosphere, with characters who linger in your mind and a setting that feels like it exists outside of time. If you’re looking for books matching that experience, I’ve rounded up five novels that channel similar dark academia energy, moral complexity, and obsession-fuelled tension.

1. The Likeness by Tana French

A literary thriller with a gothic edge, The Likeness follows detective Cassie Maddox as she goes undercover in a tight-knit group of postgraduate students. When a murder victim is found bearing an uncanny resemblance to her, Cassie assumes the victim’s identity to infiltrate the group. What follows is a haunting exploration of identity, friendship, and how far someone will go to belong. If you loved the secretive, intellectually elite world of Tartt’s Hampden College, this one is a must-read.

2. Bunny by Mona Awad

If The Secret History were remixed with a dose of surrealism and horror, you’d get Bunny. Set at a prestigious MFA programme, this novel explores toxic friendships and outsider anxiety through the eyes of a scholarship student drawn into a clique of wealthy, saccharine-creepy girls who call each other “Bunny.” Awad turns dark academia into something twisted, weird, and strangely funny — and like Tartt, she uses literary devices to destabilise the reader and leave you questioning what’s real.

3. Black Chalk by Christopher J. Yates

Six Oxford students begin an elaborate psychological game that quickly escalates, blurring the lines between play and cruelty. Black Chalk explores group dynamics, betrayal, and the long shadows of youth. Told in dual timelines with a compelling, unreliable narrator, this book has all the hallmarks of Tartt’s novel: an elite academic setting, a mystery at its core, and characters who unravel slowly over time.

4. Catherine House by Elisabeth Thomas

Set in a secretive university that promises to unlock the world’s most gifted minds, Catherine House is a moody, speculative slow burn that blends gothic atmosphere with psychological suspense. Like The Secret History, it’s about students who become dangerously obsessed with their studies and each other. While the plot leans more sci-fi sometimes, the tone and setting will feel familiar to Tartt fans.

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

This one might be the closest spiritual cousin to The Secret History. Set at an elite conservatory where students study Shakespeare exclusively, the novel follows a group of friends whose devotion to their art and each other leads to murder. It has everything: literary allusions, complex friendships, obsession, betrayal, and a frame narrative that peels back layers of guilt and ambiguity.

Bonus: The book that inspired Tartt

Before The Secret History, there was Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh. Tartt has openly acknowledged its influence, and the similarities are apparent: the golden, tragic allure of a tight-knit, privileged group at university; the sense of nostalgia; the emotional entanglements that define the characters for life. Waugh’s novel may be more bittersweet than sinister, but it helped shape the landscape. The Secret History would eventually enter — and if you haven’t read it yet, you’re in for a treat.