I know I do! An educational setting is supposed to be a safe place, a shelter from the ‘real world.’ It doesn’t work out that way in Dark Academia. The popularity of horror books, films, and TV shows proves how much people love to be scared. I wasn’t a popular kid in school, but I loved writing about them! It was a lot of fun to imagine what life is like for those at the top of the high school food chain. Most of the kids in this book are popular and well-liked. With a little murder thrown in, of course…īut it wasn’t just about the money and the entitlement. I want to read about how others live, and this book gave me the opportunity to imagine what those lives might be like. I don’t want to read about myself all the time-that would be so boring. Living vicariously through other people’s lives is a part of fiction, and certainly a part of why I love to read. That’s part of what made it so fun to write, and hopefully fun to read. I wasn’t a rich kid, I didn’t go to a private school, certainly not one like the fictional Belmont Academy. For Your Own Good is no exception, and that was a deliberate choice I made when writing it. Many Dark Academia books take place at private schools, where the students are wealthy and privileged. It grounds the book in a familiar place, because from there the story usually gets pretty crazy. All of my books take place in a mundane, everyday setting, from the suburbs to a high school. I write thrillers, and most people (hopefully!) can’t relate to murder or psychopaths or the betrayals…but the setting is something different. Dark Academia books always have an element of the familiar, something we can relate to.

The cliques, the popular kids, the outcasts…we’ve seen it. Our experiences might be good, bad, or horrific, but school is one thing the majority of people have in common. We may not go to private schools or expensive universities, but we all go to high school. So what do we love about these books? I don’t know, but I have a few theories. Recently there’s been an explosion of Dark Academia books, including The Maidens by Alex Michaelides, Bad Habits by Amy Gentry, and Kill All Your Darlings by David Bell.

Author samantha downing