Are you an avid reader looking to be transported to a school campus or academic setting?  Look no further!  Whether you’re a student yourself or just feeling nostalgic for the academic world, there’s nothing quite like a good campus novel to get you in the back-to-school spirit.  These books capture the excitement, the drama, and the challenges of college life and are guaranteed to transport you back to your own university days – or make you wish you’d attended a school like the ones in these stories.  Here are some new 2023 campus novels to add to your reading list!

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New 2023 Campus Novels to Add to Your Reading List

My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin

An incisive, deeply resonant debut novel about a nonconsensual sexual encounter that propels one woman’s final semester at an elite New England college into controversy and chaos—and into an ill-advised affair with a married professor.

You can listen to my chat with Daisy on the podcast here!

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

The Unfortunates by J K Chukwu

An edgy, bitingly funny debut about a queer, half-Nigerian college sophomore who, enraged and exhausted by the racism at her elite college, sets out to find truth about The Unfortunates—the unlucky subset of Black undergrads who have been mysteriously dying.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

The Things We Do to Our Friends by Heather Darwent

She’s an outsider desperate to belong, but the cost of entry might be her darkest secret in this intoxicating debut of literary suspense following a clique of dangerously ambitious students at the University of Edinburgh.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai

A stirring investigation into collective memory and a deeply felt examination of one woman’s reckoning with her past, with a transfixing mystery at its heart.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

Old Enough by Haley Jakobson

A debut novel “as astute, funny, and loving as your best friend from college”* about a young bisexual woman who is pulled between the new life she’s creating for herself and the life she worked so hard to escape.

Watch Haley talk about her book at the Epigraph Literary Festival!

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

The Adult by Bronwyn Fischer

An addictively gripping queer coming-of-age story about an all-consuming, insidious love affair between a college freshman and a mysterious older woman, from an unforgettable new voice in fiction.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

The Bones of the Story by Carol Goodman

The twisty locked-room mystery from two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award–winning author Carol Goodman, about a group of former classmates trapped on their college campus—with a murderer among them.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

The Rachel Incident by Caroline O’Donoghue

A brilliantly funny novel about friends, lovers, Ireland in chaos, and a young woman desperately trying to manage all three.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

The Night It Ended by Katie Garner

The Night It Ended by Katie Garner intertwines the narrative with the transcript of an anonymous interview, this stunning suspense debut from Katie Garner will take you on a twisting path where nothing—and no one—is what it seems.

Watch Katie talk about her book at the Epigraph Literary Festival!

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

The Professor by Lauren Nossett

A gripping campus thriller for fans of Karin Slaughter and Tana French, The Professor investigates the darkest corners of academic life: ambition, lies, and obsession.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

Alice Sadie Celine by Sarah Blakley-Cartwright

A hypnotic, sexy, and incisive debut adult novel following one woman’s affair with her daughter’s best friend that tests the limits of love and ambition.

Buy from Amazon or Bookshop

What do you think of the 2023 campus novels on this list?

Have you read any of these books on our list?  What are some of your favorite academic or campus novels?  Let me know your thoughts, ideas, and book suggestions in the comments below!