Where Shadows Meet

By Author / Illustrator

Patrice Caldwell

Genre

Fantasy

Age range(s)

14+

Publisher

Hot Key Books

ISBN

9781471411861

Format

Paperback / softback

Published

01-04-2025

Synopsis

You have no idea what I've done for love. Just as you have no idea what you may one day do.

Once long ago, a girl named Favre sacrificed her wings for love. Thana, the young goddess she so willingly gave them up for, sacrificed that same love for power. But everything has a cost.

Favre never got over the loss of her wings. And Thana's choices led to a life of eternal night, and later, their destruction. Favre has bided her time ever since, waiting for the chance to resurrect the girl she loves who turned her into the creature she hates.

Now, a thousand years later, Leyla, the crown princess of the malichora - an ancient race that survives on human blood - must travel to the Island of the Dead when her best friend is captured during an attack on her nation's capital. Along with Najja, a fierce, beautiful seer, and the last person she expected to help her, Leyla forges down a dangerous path, intent on saving her friend. But nothing is as it seems. The closer she gets to her goal, the more she risks awakening an ancient evil and destroying everything she holds dear.

Set in the aftermath of a war between vampires, humans, and the gods that created them, this devastating romantic fantasy asks do we choose our fates, or do our fates choose us?

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Reviews

Eileen

Some 20 years on from the Twilight phenomenon, a resurgence of the vampire narrative seems timely. The Sunday Times bestseller, Where Shadows Meet, provides an original twist - combining vampire lore with the romantasy subgenre popularised by BookTok.The first in a duology, it stars vampires born and made, the humans they’ve been fighting for centuries and the gods that created them both - adding in angels, seers and royalty for good measure.

1201 years ago in the Heavenly Realms, the misunderstood Favre sacrificed her wings for love of the goddess Thana who, in turn, sacrificed this love for power. One thousand years later, Leyla, the crown princess of the malichora, an ancient race who survives on human blood, travels to the Island of the Dead intent on rescuing a captured friend. Accompanied on this perilous journey by an unlikely ally, seer Najja, she also risks awakening an ancient evil and destroying everything she loves.

These two slowburn sapphic love stories are told through the points of view of three main characters across two timelines. This complex, nonlinear storytelling allows for detailed world-building and intriguing back story revelations. Diary entries, along with suspenseful closing sentences, create a 'just one more chapter' need to read. A Royal family tree and guide to vampire bloodlines are helpfully provided.

As ambitious as it is inventive, Where Shadows Meet tackles huge themes of love and loss, loyalty and betrayal. It explores complex family bonds, contrasts pure and toxic relationships and questions the lengths we go to for love and how far it is possible to change your own destiny. As such, it would make a fascinating book club read. Atmospheric, descriptive and carefully crafted, Where Shadows Meet will satisfy romantasy fans looking for something a bit different and reboot vampire fantasy for a new generation of readers.

*Those working in schools will note that the book provides representation of chronic pain and carries trigger warnings from the author of 'blood, death, psychological abuse, oppression and the use of enslaved Black people as disposable labor as well as references to prior self-harm (not depicted) and scarring'.

352 pages / Reviewed by Eileen Armstrong, school librarian