We’re back for season 4! You’ve missed us, right? We’ve missed recording the podcast so we’re so pleased to be back.

Our first title this season is Kelly Andrew’s debut, ‘The Whispering Dark’ and what a book to kick off the new season with! This hauntingly atmospheric novel delivers endless vibes and a love interest that threw us right back to the bad boys with bad attitudes of Golden Age YA of old (aka 2005-2015).

Spoiler: we loved this book, and we reckon you guys will too.

NINTH HOUSE meets THE ATLAS SIX in the enemies-to-lovers dark academia debut everyone's talking about . . .

Delaney Meyers-Petrov is tired of being seen as fragile just because she's Deaf. So, when she's accepted into a prestigious program at Godbole University that trains students to slip between parallel worlds, she's excited for the chance to prove herself. But her semester gets off to a rocky start when she has an awkward encounter with a pretentious upperclassman, Colton Price, whom she has every intention of keeping her distance from.

Colton has been ordered to keep far away from the new girl, and the voices that call to her from the shadows. But the pull of her proves impossible to ignore, and he can't help but be fascinated by her unusual talents.

After a fellow student turns up dead, she and Colton are forced to form a tenuous alliance, plummeting down a rabbit hole of deeply buried university secrets. They soon find themselves up against something old and nameless, an enemy that threatens to tear them - and their forbidden partnership - apart.

Enemies-to-lovers? Yes, please. A Deaf protagonist? About time. A suspected murder? Of course.

We HAD to put this as our series opener.

But is it dark academia?

In this episode we discuss:

• The development of Lane and her coming into her own

• Our love for Colton Price: a classic YA love interest

• Lane’s experience as a Deaf student navigating university

• ‘The Whispering Dark’ by Kelly Andrew

• ‘Ninth House’ by Leigh Bardugo

• ‘The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer’ by Michelle Hodkin

• ‘Black Dagger Brotherhood’ by JR Ward

• ‘Vicious’ by VE Schwab

• ‘Twilight’ by Stephenie Meyer

• ‘Supernatural’

• The Hinterlands of ‘The Nightmare before Christmas’

You can grab a copy of ‘The Whispering Dark’ from bookshop.org and support both us and independent bookshops. A win for all, with no extra cost to you!

You can also sign up to The Dark Academicals Book Club mailer to be entered for exclusive book club content and giveaways!