Legendborn is the rare fantasy that gives you everything at once: a secret society, a campus, a grief story, a magic system with real costs, and a Black heroine who refuses to be a guest in somebody else’s legend. Tracy Deonn’s 2020 debut follows sixteen-year-old Bree Matthews to a residential program at UNC–Chapel Hill, where she discovers the Order of the Round Table — descendants of King Arthur and his knights, reincarnated as Scions — and a second, older magic called Root, practiced by her own ancestors. If you finished it (and its sequels) and want that feeling again, this guide — a companion to our books like Children of Blood and Bone list — gathers twelve books that share its DNA, grouped by which thread of Legendborn grabbed you hardest.
First, Finish the Legendborn Cycle
If you have only read the first book, the best “book like Legendborn” is the next one. Legendborn (September 15, 2020) won the Coretta Scott King/John Steptoe Award for New Talent and spent nine weeks on the New York Times bestseller list. Bloodmarked followed on November 8, 2022, and Oathbound — the third book — arrived on March 4, 2025. Deonn has discussed a fourth installment, expanding a story she originally envisioned as a trilogy, but no official title or release date has been verified. A television adaptation, with Felicia D. Henderson as co-executive producer, was announced in 2022. Read the three published novels in order before you go hunting for substitutes; nothing on this list replaces Bree’s story, and the sequels deepen everything the first book sets up.
If the Secret Society Grabbed You
1. Blood at the Root by LaDarrion Williams (2024)
Seventeen-year-old Malik arrives at Caiman University — an HBCU for the young, Black, and magical — hunting answers about his mother’s disappearance and the powers he cannot control. Like Legendborn, it is a campus novel built on a hidden magical institution, Black history, and a boy (here, a Black boy at the center, which YA fantasy still offers too rarely) learning that his inheritance is also his danger. An instant New York Times bestseller, and the closest thing on this list to Legendborn’s campus-plus-secret-society engine.
2. Ace of Spades by Faridah Àbíké-Íyímídé (2021)
No fantasy here — and that is the point. Devon and Chiamaka, the only Black students at an elite private academy, are targeted by an anonymous texter determined to expose their secrets. It shares Legendborn’s sharpest thread: what it means to be Black in a historically white institution that smiles while it surveils you. Read it for the dark-academia tension without the magic, and for a thriller that earns its twists.
A note on lists you may have seen elsewhere: many read-alike roundups hand you Leigh Bardugo’s Ninth House (2019) for its Yale secret societies. It is a strong book, but it is adult, graphically violent, and tonally far from Deonn. The secret-society matches below stay in YA and stay closer to what Legendborn actually does.
If Ancestral Magic Is What You Want More Of
3. The Gilded Ones by Namina Forna (2021)
Sixteen-year-old Deka bleeds gold instead of red, marking her as impure in a world that punishes girls for their power — until the emperor’s army recruits her into an order of near-immortal warriors. Forna’s West African-inspired fantasy shares Legendborn’s central move: a girl told her body is wrong discovers her body is the source of her power. Fierce, fast, and furious about patriarchy in a way that pairs perfectly with Bree’s fight against the Order’s old men.
4. Raybearer by Jordan Ifueko (2020)
Tarisai, raised to kill the crown prince she is sworn to protect, must choose between the council that raised her and the found family she builds instead. Ifueko’s West African-inspired fantasy is about inherited obligation, loyalty, and autonomy — the same questions Root magic poses in Legendborn, asked in a fully secondary world. Read it if Bree’s struggle between two magical traditions is what stayed with you.
5. A Song Below Water by Bethany C. Morrow (2020)
Tavia is a siren in Portland, hiding her voice in a world that fears it; Effie is discovering a magic tied to land, water, and Renaissance fairs. Morrow’s contemporary fantasy is quieter than Legendborn — more about friendship, passing, and the cost of hiding — but its ancestral magic, passed through Black women’s lines, rhymes beautifully with Root. A good palate cleanser between bigger epics.
If You Want Black Heroines, Grief, and High Stakes
6. Children of Blood and Bone by Tomi Adeyemi (2018)
The obvious match, and still the right one. Zélie, a divîner in Orïsha, fights to restore magic after a king has murdered its practitioners — including her mother. Adeyemi’s West African-inspired epic shares Legendborn’s grief-driven heroine, its magic-as-inheritance, and its refusal to soften what oppression costs. Our Children of Blood and Bone movie guide tracks the 2027 film adaptation if the book leaves you wanting more of Orïsha on screen.
7. A Song of Wraiths and Ruin by Roseanne A. Brown (2020)
Karina, a princess who has lost her mother, will bargain with anything — including a necromancer’s heart — to resurrect her; Malik, a boy who has lost his sister, will do anything to save her. Brown’s West African-inspired fantasy pairs two grieving teenagers on a collision course, and its interest in what grief makes people bargain away is pure Legendborn territory.
8. Kingdom of Souls by Rena Barron (2019)
Arrah, the daughter of powerful witchdoctors, has no magic of her own — until a demon offers her a bargain she may not survive. Barron’s fantasy is darker and more horror-tinged than Deonn’s, but its questions are the same: what will you trade for power, and who pays when the bill comes due?
If the Mystery and the Magic System Hooked You
9. Blood Debts by Terry J. Benton-Walker (2023)
Thirty years after a magical massacre, the descendants of New Orleans’ most powerful magical families are still paying for it — and twins Clement and Cristina are caught between feuding houses, intergenerational curses, and gods who meddle. Benton-Walker’s contemporary fantasy is twisty, funny, and queer-centered, with a magic system rooted in Afro and Afro-Latinx ritual practice. Read it for the mystery-box plotting and the family secrets; Legendborn fans who loved unraveling the Order’s history will feel at home.
10. The Poisons We Drink by Bethany Baptiste (2024)
Venus’s mother brews love potions for the wealthy in Washington, D.C. — until she is murdered, and Venus must take over the family business to protect her little sister. Baptiste’s urban fantasy shares Legendborn’s contemporary setting, its secret magical economy hiding inside a real city, and its heroine who inherits a dangerous trade she never asked for.
11. This Poison Heart by Kalynn Bayron (2021)
Briseis can make plants grow with a touch — a gift tied to Greek myth, a family secret, and a house in the Hudson Valley that may be haunted. Bayron weaves mythology into a contemporary story the way Deonn weaves Arthurian legend into a campus story, and Briseis’s Black heroine with two mothers and a gift she did not choose will feel familiar to Bree’s readers in the best way.
12. Cemetery Boys by Aiden Thomas (2020)
An honest-framing pick: Yadriel is a trans Latino brujo, not a Black heroine, and his story is rooted in Latinx tradition rather than Black Southern magic. It earns its place here because it shares Legendborn’s deepest engine — a teenager using ancestral magic to contact the dead, defying a tradition that says he does not belong in it, and finding family on the other side of that defiance. Read it for the spirit work, the grief, and the joy, and for a reminder that Legendborn’s themes travel.
How to Choose Your Next Read
Closest overall match: Blood at the Root — campus, secret magical institution, Black history, high stakes.
Closest in feeling: Children of Blood and Bone and The Gilded Ones — grief, fury, and girls whose power the world calls wrong.
Closest in structure: Blood Debts and The Poisons We Drink — contemporary cities, hidden magic, family secrets to unravel.
Best palate cleanser: A Song Below Water — quieter, stranger, and kind.
For more in this lane, our Black fantasy books hub and our Black YA fantasy guide collect the wider field, including Legendborn itself and the Black witch books that overlap with Bayron and Baptiste. Legendborn opened a door — Arthurian legend retold through Southern Black girl magic — and a whole shelf of writers has been walking through it ever since. Start with the book that matches the thread you loved most, and keep going.
Looking for more read-alikes? Our guide to books like the Shadowhunter Chronicles from Epic Reads, HarperCollins’s YA community, also recommends Legendborn itself alongside other secret-society fantasies — a useful cross-check if you want a second opinion on where to go next.