I’m sure boarding schools have so many issues and aren’t nearly as fun as they are made out to be in books and movies but as a kid they always just felt like they’d be so cool and books set at boarding schools always end up being a lot of fun to read.
So here are 13 books I loved that are set at boarding schools!
XOXO – Axie Oh
Jenny is a cello prodigy that has one goal: to get into a prestigious music conservatory. One day she meets a mysterious and handsome boy called Jaewoo and in a moment of spontaneity, she allows him to pull her out of her comfort zone for an unforgettable night of adventure before he disappears without a word.
Until 3 months later when Jenny and her mother move to South Korea to take care of her ailing grandmother and she finds out he’s a student at the same elite arts academy that she’s just started at. And, he’s a member of one of the world’s biggest k-pop bands and forbidden from dating.
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Truly Devious – Maureen Johnson
Stevie Bell has just started attending Ellingham Academy, an isolated famous private boarding school for the best thinkers, inventors and artists. Every student there is exceptionally talented but Stevie Bell is different.
She’s been accepted because she plans to solve a decades old crime that happened on the school grounds. Shortly after Ellingham Academy opened, the wife and daughter of the founder were kidnapped with only one clue left behind – a taunting rhyme from someone calling themselves Truly Devious.
As Stevie begins to investigate, Truly Devious makes a surprise return and a body shows up on campus.
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Wilder Girls – Rory Power
18 months ago, Raxter School for Girls was put under quarantine when the Tox hit. They’re cut off from the rest of the world and left to fend for themselves on their small island home, where the girls are warned to never wander past the school’s fence where the Tox has made the woods wild and dangerous. They’re left to sit waiting for a cure.
But then Byatt goes missing and her best friend, Hetty, will do anything to find her… including breaking quarantine.
Genre: Young Adult, Post-apocalyptic
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Crave – Tracy Wolff
When Grace’s parents die in a car accident she’s forced to move to Alaska to live with her cousin and uncle at the boarding school her uncle owns. But soon after arriving she begins to notice that there’s something not quite right with the students…
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Marked – P.C Cast & Kristin Cast
16-year old Zoey Redbird has been Marked with a crescent moon by a Vampire Tracker which means she must enter the mysterious House of Night. Here she learns that she is no ordinary fledgling. She has been marked by the vampyre Goddess, Nyx, and has affinities for all 5 elements; air, fire, water, earth and spirit.
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal
Buy the book: amazon
I’d Tell You I Love You, But Then I’d Have to Kill You – Ally Carter
Cammie Morgan is a student at the Gallagher Academy for Exceptional Young Women, which is actually a school for girls learning to be spies. Cammie is fluent in fourteen languages and can kill a man in seven different ways, but she has no idea what to do when she meets an ordinary boy that seems to like her.
Genre: Young Adult
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Looking For Alaska – John Green
Pudge’s obsession with famous last words means that he is done with his safe life at home.
He heads off to Culver Creek Boarding school and his life very quickly changes. He meets Alaska Young, a girl who is beautiful, funny, and clever, but also self-destructive and pretty screwed up. He thinks she’s absolutely fascinating.
Alaska pulls Pudge into her crazy world and then… it happens, and nothing is ever the same again.
Genre: Young Adult
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Anna and the French Kiss – Stephanie Perkins
Anna is looking forward to her senior year. She has great friends, a great job, and a crush on a cute boy that’s close to becoming more. And then her parents force her to move to Paris to attend boarding school.
Soon after she arrives, she meets the charming and handsome Etienne, but soon realises he has a girlfriend.
Genre: Young Adult, Romance
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
A Deadly Education – Naomi Novik
El is a student at Scholomance, a school for the magically gifted where failure means certain death. This is a school with no teachers, no holidays, and no way of leaving until you graduate… or die.
El has a dark power that she does her best to keep secret, but that’s easier said than done when the hallways are full of monsters and students that are your enemy.
Genre: Paranormal, Fantasy
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Fallen – Lauren Kate
After an accident, Luce Price has been shipped off to Sword & Cross Academy, a boarding school for troubled kids in Georgia.
As soon as she arrives Daniel Grigori captures her attention, there’s something achingly familiar about him but he seems to hate her and wants absolutely nothing to do with her. But Luce can’t let it go and she’s desperate to find out his secret even if it kills her.
Genre: Young Adult, Paranormal, Romance
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Plain Bad Heroines – Emily M. Danforth
In 1902, 2 students at the Brookhants School for Girls are madly in love and obsessed with the memoir of a scandalous young writer. A few months later, they’re found dead after a horrific wasp attack, the book lying next to their intertwined bodies. After 3 more deaths on the property, the school is closed for good.
Over a century later, a controversial horror film about the events at the school is being filmed at the crumbling and supposedly cursed school starring Hollywood lesbian ‘it girl’ Harper Harper.
Genre:
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Where Sleeping Girls Lie – Faridah Abike-Iyimide
After being homeschooled for her entire life, Sade Hussein is starting her third year of high school at Alfred Nobel Academy boarding school after her dad has died. Sade immediately befriends her roommate, Elizabeth, but then Elizabeth completely disappears on Sade’s first night at the Academy.
Rumours quickly begin to swirl about Sade, and then she captures the attention of the most popular girls at school.
As Sade begins to feel herself drawn into the drama of all of the wealthy and elite students at Alfred Nobel Academy, she feels like she’s getting closer to figuring out what happened to Elizabeth. And then another student dies
Sade quickly realises that there is more to this school than she ever realised and there are secrets hidden behind every corner.
Genre: Young Adult, Mystery
Buy the book: bookshop | amazon
Say Her Name – Juno Dawson
Bobbie isn’t the type of girl to believe in ghosts so when a Halloween dare ends up with her friends summoning the legendary ghost Bloody Mary at her boarding school she thinks nothing of it. And, after saying Bloody Mary’s name 5 times in front of a candlelit mirror… nothing happens.
But the next morning Bobbie finds a message on her mirror counting down the days and then increasingly terrifying things keep happening and it seems like they actually did manage to summon Bloody Mary and they have 5 days to stop her before they all die.
