Of Quirks and Curses Books in Order

Of Quirks and Curses is Shannon Mayer’s dark academia fantasy romance series, beginning with Neverthorn. Its heroine, Harlow Daygon, is a thief, magic-school dropout, and troublemaker who is nearly thirty and still cannot cast a simple rune without making a mess of it.

Naturally, she is supposed to save the world.

The setup has a good bite. A legendary Hero once stood against the darkness, but that Hero is gone, and the best candidate left is Harlow. She is dragged back to Neverthorn Academy with seven former classmates and told to train for a destiny she neither asked for nor believes she can handle. The school is magical, but it is not gentle. Professors carry grudges, old classmates carry baggage, and Harlow’s own past may hide something worse than failure.

The series uses academy fantasy without making the heroine a wide-eyed teen. Harlow has history, bad habits, and a mouth that gets her in trouble. That gives the school setting a different flavor. She is not learning who she is for the first time. She is being forced to face who she became after earlier wounds and mistakes.

Heathermoor continues after the betrayal at Neverthorn, sending Harlow and House Phoenix into hiding at a mysterious Scottish sister school. The danger shifts, but the pressure stays on her identity, her magic, and the question of whether she is a hero, a villain, or something less tidy.

Read Neverthorn first. The series depends on Harlow’s secrets and the academy’s politics unfolding in order, and the second book builds directly on the damage left by the first.