This Rec League is from PamG, who is looking for some competence porn in academic settings:
I don’t know if this is appropriate for a Rec League, but I have a rather persnickety request. I really like books set in academia, but I have problems with student/professor match-ups. The issue isn’t necessarily the relationship if it’s consensual and the author addresses the power (or age) imbalance between student and teacher in a serious way. However, I really have an issue with the following things:
1) Grown assed adults who cannot keep their pants on for a lousy semester when the wellbeing of their career and/or lover is at stake,
2) Draconian HR or fraternization policies used to threaten “true love” and imply that protecting students is somehow unfair or unnecessary,
3) Protagonists who lie primarily to protect their own interests,
4) Academic environments that seem unrelated to reality.
To sum up, I like protagonists with some self-control, common sense, and a modicum of integrity. I like fictional higher education that feels authentic and has reasonable and realistic policies and procedures regarding student/teacher relationships.
Maybe there are no books with this trope that will ever satisfy me, but also, maybe there are readers who have found some decent books with this trope. I would really love to find something where the professor in this situation is a woman.
Sarah: Celia Lake, 10000% I can hear Catherine hollering from the great library in the sky. She LOVED Celia Lake’s books and they’re full of grown ass adults who are thoughtful and mature, and Eclipse is set at Schola, one of the institutions of magic in that world. There are several series, too.
The Academy of the Dead by Vermilion H. Baine ( A ) might also fit – they’re necromancers trying to decipher a page from a dangerous book.
Amanda: Regardless of the request, The Academy of the Dead sounds fun, so I bought it. Whoops!
What books would you recommend? Drop them in the comments!
I have the same request! An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister is one of my recent favourites.
Would An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister be of interest? It’s two new professors who get married to take advantage of the partner hire clause in the contract.
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/an-academic-affair-by-jodi-mcalister/
I don’t gravitate towards books set in academia, in part because of how much I can’t with the professor/student thing.
An Academic Affair by Jodi McAlister is contemporary, m/f romance, set in academia, and enemy (rivals) to lovers – all 4 of which descriptors are things that usually break me but this was really good.
Tommy Cabot Was Here by Cat Sebastian might also work, m/m historical (1960s is historical, gulp) romance but it’s a private boarding school not a college, dunno if that still counts. Delightful but so short.
Dionysus in Wisconsin series by EH Lupton is one I cannot recommend enough, it is a m/m romance set at the magic department of University of Wisconsin Madison (oh good the 70s is also historical now). It has all the things.
Emily Tesh’s The Incandescent is not so much a romance although there are elements in both timelines, but it’s about one of the teachers at a magic school although as with Tommy Cabot Was here, she had been a student. Very nice to read about the grownups not the kids.
Death in the Spires by KJ Charles should work also (I couldn’t not rec a KJ Charles!) although it’s a historical mystery more than it is a m/m romance. It’s like a gothic if instead of a big ol house it’s Oxford.
A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness has great academic setting vibes, but it is a paranormal so its relationship to reality is flexible.
https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/reviews/keeper-shelf-a-discovery-of-witches-by-deborah-harkness/
An oldie but a goodie: Gaudy Night by Dorothy L. Sayers, starring Harriet Vane and her suitor, Lord Peter Wimsey. Set in an Oxford women’s college in the 1930s it’s a love story, a mystery (not murder but a madwoman in the classroom) and a meditation on the conflict between heart and head. Can a woman who cherishes the life of the mind find a man who truly wants that in a wife? It does exhibit some of the prejudices that were openly and casually aired in that age about race and gender.
Oh, and another one – Possession, by A. S. Byatt. It was made into a film with Gwenneth Paltrow a while back though they changed a lot of the book, as film often does, so read or, better yet, listen to it. If you like Victorian poets (and poetry, the author creates marvelous poetic voices), this one is for you.
And two plain academic novels with no romance but which are a lot of fun: Dear Committee Members by Julie Schumacher. Written mostly in letters of recommendation, it tells the story of a male professor whose academic ,sins are finally catching up with him.
And Richard Russo’s Straight Man. There is a TV series, “Lucky Hank,” based on it, but I haven’t watched it. If you know nothing about it, read the book! It’s set in the 1980s at a backwater Pennsylvania College and has it all and it’s laugh out loud funny.
I don’t know if this will scratch the itch, but “Office Hours” by Katrina Jackson kind of worked for me. (I teach in a primarily-undergraduate university, so I have a lot of issues with how academia is portrayed in general. I avoid any books with student-professor relationships.) “Office Hours” focuses on a relationship between two faculty – one tenured, one tenure-track. They’re in different departments, which avoids some of the concerns with power differentials. Some of the challenges faced by the tenure-track faculty rang true to me, and I liked how the tenured faculty showed his support for the tenure-track faculty professionally – both explicitly and in more quiet ways. There are a few spicy scenes – it has been a few years since I last read it, so I don’t remember if any of those scenes happened on campus.
K.L. Noone’s Spells and Sensibility perhaps? Noone has other academia ones but I haven’t read them.
Thank you so much for the shout-out! For a little more context: Eclipse is at a boarding school, kids up to age 18ish (the romance is between two teachers). It absolutely came out of my own experience working in a high school for a decade (in the library) and how complex that environment is, with so much going on all the time, and the often contradictory bits of how a school works.
(Eclipse has a content note for difficult staff meetings, and I get periodic comments of “I laughed when I saw that, and then I read it, and … yeah, I’ve been in those meetings.” I have too, obviously.)
For university, Apt to be Suspicious, which came out last year, is set at Oxford during the 1947-1948 school year. Involves Greats (what the rest of us call Classics), cryptography, and a bit of confusing magic. The romance is between two undergraduates, but there’s a fair bit of interaction with multiple teaching and mentoring adults associated with the university and otherwise.
Seconding the recommendations for Eclipse! It’s one of my favorites among Celia’s books—and that’s saying something, since I have reread most of her books at least once, and half of them at least three times. I think I’ve read Eclipse about 5 times at this point; it’s a comfort book for me.
Gaudy Night is brilliant; it’s arguably the best Sayers’ Lord Peter Wimsey novels. The romance and the mystery are not only balanced, they play off each other in ways that both threaten and strengthen the main characters’ relationship. And the fictional Oxford college that Sayers depicts is based heavily on her own years at Oxford. That said, I strongly recommend reading the previous two books featuring Harriet Vane before you read Gaudy Night; knowing Harriet’s past experiences, both before and with Peter, is really important to understanding her personality, her choices, and her reluctance to either accept Peter’s love or send him away.
An Academic Affair stressed me out no end. It was TOO realistic. I stressed along with the protagonists every step of the way (always about their academic careers; the love story percolated nicely) and the stress just never stops! Which is why humanities academia, in particular, sucks. A second book is clearly in the works, but I just can’t, even though I enjoyed the writing and the characters, and it was all well handled.
David Lodge wrote a lot of academia-set books, but they’re more satire, not romance. If you’ll take a mystery, Murder at the MLA is top notch.
The only true romance I can think of is Anne of the Island.
LEARNING CURVES and MARGIN OF ERROR by Rachel Lacey are F/F romances set in a small college town in Vermont. The MCs of the first book are art history professors (one is a past student of the other but there was no romance until after they became colleagues) and has a lot of “life in academia” content that I enjoyed. The MCs in the second book are an adjunct professor of statistics and a real estate agent in the small town, with much less focus on what’s happening at the college. It’s mostly a coming out story for characters who are in their 40s.
McAllister’s An Academic Affair was so realistic that I immediately texted a non-romance-reading friend/former colleague to share passages from the book.
In Take a Hint, Dani Brown (Talia Hibbert), Dani is a grad student, and I remember not being annoyed by the portrayal of academia and also that this was my favorite of the Brown sisters trilogy of books written by Hibbert.
I also loved The Gossip, by Jenny Holiday about a college student and a campus police officer. This is the book where I learned that the sentence “I require not just consent, but continuous consent” is one of the hottest sentences in the English language.
Also, note to authors: as a professor who teaches first-year writing, I would dearly love a romance where sex was a reward for finishing grading papers.
I highly recommend Katrina Jackson’s Curriculum Vitae series about professors. In Office Hours, Deja and Alejandro have a secret mutual crush and she’s working on getting tenure. In Sabbatical, Toni is about to start her sabbatical from teaching and Mike finally acts on his long-time feelings for her.
Teach Me by Olivia Dade follows Martin and Rose, two high school history teachers in their 40s. A delight!
Ali Hazelwood has a couple of books in an academic setting and is a former professor herself (The Love Hypothesis, Love on the Brain(/i)). Rachel Lynn Solomon has a book coming out this summer, Extracurricular, which sounds like it will fit the bill.
Ali Hazelwood has a couple of books in an academic setting and is a former professor herself (The Love Hypothesis, Love on the Brain). Rachel Lynn Solomon has a book coming out this summer, Extracurricular, which sounds like it will fit the bill.
Another vote for A.S. Byatt’s Possession, the OG of academia romances. Don’t bother with the movie, they did Roland’s character so dirty.
As Kay says, it isn’t a romance, but Dear Committee Members was so good. We’re moving after 32 years in the same house and I’ve given away at least 2000 books, but I kept that one. It’s the perfect mood lifter.
Here’s another oldie and not a romance, but Kate Fansler in Amanda Cross’ mystery series is extremely competent.
And then there’s Emily Wilde and Wendell Bambleby in Heather Fawcett’s romantsy series are a lot of fun.
Most of my favourites have already been mentioned, but I really liked Charish Reid’s HEARTS ON HOLD about a romance between a professor and a librarian. One of the best ambitious FMCs and cinnamon roll MMCs.
The only ones I can think of are the dated-but-still-good THE CINDERELLA DEAL (Jennifer Crusie) and the SECRET HISTORY OF THE PINK CARNATION series (Lauren Willig).
Seconding the TOMMY CABOT recommendation. Although it is a prep school rather than college, it captures that “fall/winter school days on the East Coast” feeling beautifully. It’s just so dang COZY.
Not a romance, but a mystery with a romantic arc: History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook
Most of my favourite academic romances have already been mentioned, but here are a few more that I have enjoyed:
Heather Fawcett’s Emily Wilde series, a fantasy trilogy set in an alternative Europe and featuring Emily Wilde, a grumpy antisocial Cambridge academic who studies fairies and her brilliant and mercurial academic rival, Wendell Bambleby.
Kate Clayborn’s Beginner Luck is about Kit Averin, a university researcher, and Ben Tucker, an industry recruiter who is trying to coax Kit to leave her safe and comfortable university lab position.
Jennifer Hennessy’s Degrees of Engagement is about two graduate student, Bianca and Xavier, who have just completed their PhDs. Bianca is from a very traditional immigrant Greek family (think “My Big Fat Greek Wedding”) and none of her family bother to show up for her PhD graduation because they just don’t think it’s all that important, compared to say having a baby or becoming engaged. So of course you know what Bianca and Xavier decide to do as way to teach her family to better appreciate Bianca and her achievements? Of course you do because you are romance experts.
Jean Webster’s Daddy-Long-Legs, published in 1912, like LM Montgomery’s Anne of the Island (published in 1915) chronicles a young woman’s experience attending college at the beginning of the 20th century. Jerusha (Judy) Abbot was abandoned as baby on the steps of an orphanage. When she comes of age, a mysterious benefactor, pays for her to go college. All she knows about him is that he is male, tall, and thinks that she is a talented writer. The only thing he asks her to do in return for his monetary support is to send regular monthly letters. Judy ends up nicknaming her benefactor, Daddy-Long-Legs, in those monthly letters. There is a romance here, but the real delight is in reading about Judy’s collegial experiences.
It’s been years since I have read them but I believe that Amanda Cross’s Kate Fansler mystery series (the books were published between 1964-2002) has a romance arc in it between Kate Fansler, amateur sleuth and English professor, and NY district attorney, Reed Amhearst.
Barbara Metz (who wrote as Barbara Peters/Elizabeth Michaels) also had academics as protagonists in quite a few of her novels. The most famous of her academic protagonists is probably that intrepid 19th-century Egyptologist Prof Radcliffe Emerson from the Amelia Peabody series (published under Barbara Peters). But there are others such as art historian Vicky Bliss (from the Barbara Peters’ Vicky Bliss series) and anthropology professor Pat MacDougal found in Barbara Michaels’ Ammie Come Home.
Given Our History by Kristyn J. Miller has an academia setting that’s pretty well done, not quite as true to life as An Academic Affair imo. The heroine is tenure-track faculty who’s going for tenure early and therefore doing a ton of service. The hero is a visiting researcher (and the heroine’s childhoods best friend/college ex) and they end up getting stuck on a bunch of committees together.
Joanna Dobson’s academic mysteries, such as The Raven and the Nightingale, and The Northbury Papers, are good both as literary and murder mysteries. The romance between the untenured feminist professor and a working class policeman develops over several books.
How the Fail at Flirting, by Denise Williams has a professor FMC and a MMC that is affiliated with the university. I don’t know how realistic the academic setting is, but the way that the characters meet, then meet again and negotiate their relationship was enjoyable.
With regard to Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, who is an old favorite, I also enjoyed her Jacqueline Kirby books. These are mysteries. Jacqueline is a librarian from somewhere in the midwest, but only the first book involves students and a study abroad program in Rome. The second book is set at a country house party in England and most of the invitees are involved in the Richard III Society. The other books are not in academic settings and follow Jacqueline’s career as a romance writer. YMMV on these books, which were written in the 1970s and 1980s.
I second all the recs for Possession and was very pleased to discover that past me had bought the audio version, so I can listen to it again. With regard to the movie, Jeremy Northam and Jennifer Ehle play the historical poets in flashbacks and their portrayal of those two characters made them come alive for me in a way that the book didn’t. Bonus, a very young Lena Headey (aka Cersei) has a role in the historical parts of the movie. If you’ve read the book, you can fast forward through the present-day scenes and just enjoy the historical parts. (Yes, I have done this.)
Thanks for this Rec League, which I didn’t know I needed until I read this post. Lots of new ideas.
Dear Mr. Brody by AM Johnson is a M/M teacher/student romance, but maybe not your usual one. Parker is a 23-year-old military veteran and Donovan is a 33-year-old literary agent and part-time professor teaching creative writing. Nothing happens when they meet as student and professor, though there’s an attraction. But they unknowingly connect on a dating app, and the truth comes out when they finally meet in person. They are aware their dating could be problematic, and I think this book treats this issue in a good way. This is also a great slow burn romance.
Topping the Jock by Jaclyn Osborn is a M/M romance between two highschool teachers who come back to teach at the school they went to as kids. Nerd/jock, enemies to lovers and lots of banter.
AJ Truman’s M/M South Rock High series is set at a highschool, with a group of BFF teachers who each find their match, mostly with other teachers. There’s a variety of tropes, including enemies to lovers, nerd/jock, friends to lovers and fake relationship.
Josh Lanyon’s All’s Fair M/M romantic suspense series (3 books – need to be read in order) has an ex-FBI officer turned history professor and his still-FBI officer ex. The university plays a prominent role especially in the first book.
Thank you all for your excellent suggestions. Clearly you are my people. Looking at this array of authors and genres, I realize I probably acquired my taste for books set in academia back when I was primarily reading mysteries and was less likely to encounter faculty/student romances. In fact, seeing Amanda Cross, Joanna Dobson, and Barbara Mertz mentioned reminded me of Charlotte MacLeod’s Peter Shandy and Jane Langton’s Homer Kelly series. i’ve no idea how well they’ve held up, but Langton was a truly lovely writer.
So many of your suggestions are already auto-buys for me, but it may be time for some rereads. I did garner at least eight new-to-me authors for the TBR. Also did some fangirling when I spotted Celia Lake in the comments. So, again, thank you. The Bitchery rules!