The True and the Crown Books in Order

The True and the Crown begins with exile. The heroine was dragged from Avalon to the human world as a child after her father nearly destroyed their magical homeland, and she has spent years wanting to go back. When that chance finally comes, it arrives wrapped in politics, suspicion, and a magic academy that is interested in using her as much as teaching her.

Avalon is beautiful, but it is not kind.

That push and pull drives the whole series. In One Kind of Wicked, the heroine is caught between the Crown and the True, both of whom see her as a tool. She also has a more personal problem, she no longer has her magic. The men who draw close to her bring comfort and attraction, but they are also tied to the same system that keeps watching her.

The middle books, Two Kinds of Damned and Three Kinds of Lost, deepen the academy and court intrigue through masked balls, royal summons, and the hunt for the person who stole her power. Then Four Kinds of Cursed and Five Kinds of Love push the series beyond school walls into haunted family history, a masked vigilante, widening tears between realms, and the threat of monsters slipping through.

This is one of Dawson's more fantasy-forward series. It still has romance at the center, but readers also get portals, kingdoms, politics, and the constant question of whether the dark lord's daughter can ever be seen as anything except her father's shadow.

If you like magic schools that turn into larger world-saving arcs, with a heroine trying to earn a second chance in the place that cast her out, The True and the Crown is a strong fit.