The Devil Heart Boys Books in Order

The Devil Heart Boys is a smaller corner of Caroline Peckham's catalog, but it shows off a side of her writing that blends high school bully romance with paranormal mystery. The series begins with Demon of Mine, and the setup is personal and eerie rather than epic.

The heroine's life falls apart, and she is forced into a new home and a new school in one of the wealthiest parts of London. That should mean stability, but instead she ends up in Mandeville Place, a house full of bad energy, dark secrets, and a boy who seems to hate her on sight. Jack Mandeville is the obvious threat, but he is not the only strange thing pressing in.

The house is part of the trap.

Darkwood Academy adds the social pressure, because Jack and his friends rule it in the way Peckham's bully boys often do, by shaping what everybody else is allowed to feel, say, and get away with. But unlike her more grounded school romances, this one keeps one foot in the supernatural. Dreams, spirits, and hidden rules give the story a mystery thread running underneath the romance.

That means the central tension is not only whether these two people can stand each other. It is also what Jack is trying to protect, what the house wants, and whether the heroine has been pulled into something much older than an ordinary school rivalry.

If you want Peckham in a more contained format, with less sprawling universe work and more haunted-house atmosphere, this series is a good fit. It still has the dark attraction and the hostile school dynamic, but the supernatural angle gives it a different flavor from the Solaria books.