In a vivid world, full of rich lore and history, Patrice Caldwell's debut brings a unique take on the creatures so many of us have come to love: vampires.

Caldwell spins this story like a fable. First through Favre's point-of-view from the origin of vampires and would-be queen who created them all, her love Thana. Favre and Thana cling to their feelings for each other like a lifeline through the darkness that follows them as they try to survive Thana's aspiration for the throne. Tensions rise, allegiances are forged, and blood is spilled across heavenly and mortal realms. Then from the perspective of Leyla, a vampire princess who is set to inherit the throne from her mother, we learn that even after decades of victory, power is all but impossible to maintain.

With the help of Naija, Leyla ventures on a journey to save her kidnapped best friend through a kingdom in the throngs of growing dissent and treacherous woods that host nightmarish dangers. She is forced to decide how much she is willing to sacrifice in order to save the ones she loves.

With heart-pounding romance and a heart-stopping ending, this book will leave readers anxiously awaiting the sequel.

Where Shadows Meet is a SLOW BURN and much closer to an epic fantasy than many modern YA fantasy books. Please take that into consideration when picking up a copy.

WHAT AN AMAZING DEBUT!!! These characters are so fantastically depicted and while the details were hard to track at times (given the timelines & number of people involved), which I entirely believe is more on me than Patrice, this was just such a good read & I'll happily recommend it to readers!

Great story. The characters were interesting. I have never read from this author before but would be interested in reading other books in the future.

DNF @ 36%

I was bored and didn't find it compelling. The flashbacks (?) were confusing and hard to follow. I liked the present day as told by Layla, but the multi POV's were hard to follow.

The premise sounded interesting and I was excited for this one but from the first chapter I was confused as to who's who. Then we start jumping POV's and I couldn't keep up. For what it's worth, Caldwell's prose aren't bad, I actually liked her writing. But the story started on a climactic moment, then never got back up and the multi POV was a detriment.

Thank you to Patrice Caldwell, St. Martins Press, and NetGalley for this e-ARC! All opinions are my own.

⭐️⭐️⭐️ - 3.5/5

“You can’t escape your fate.”

Where Shadows Meet thrusts readers into a world of gods, vampires, and a never-ending struggle for power. The story follows three women - Favre who seeks to free her wife, Najja who seeks answers about her power, and Leyla who seeks to rescue a friend. Each on their own path, yet all bound by fate, these women must decide the part they will play in a war that is centuries in the making.

I enjoyed this plot line as well as the world itself. Set in the high heavens and in the human realm, there is no shortage of beings or abilities. I loved that each vampiric bloodline has specific traits based on their founders and feel that it added originality to the world. The emphasis on self-reflection and discovery as the story progresses, specifically for Favre, kept me engaged. I wanted to know everything she was thinking because her actions often seemed at odds with who she is as a person. Her relationship with, and loyalty to, Thana is complex and presents many questions regarding the things one is willing to do for those they love. The prominent themes of love and friendship made this story feel like a true adventure, but this book was very much a build up to what is to come. I’m looking forward to returning to this story in future books!

(Thank you NetGalley, Patrice Caldwell, & St. Martin’s Press for this opportunity!)

I’ve loved vampires as far back as I can remember. I wanted this book to be immersive and consuming. Great start with a serious decline. The juvenile characters and plot caused this story to flop for me.

Thanks NetGalley for the arc to read, this is my honest review with my own opinions and thoughts

3.5- I received an ARC from NetGalley awhile ago- thank you so much for that. I had a hard time getting into it. I’m not sure if it was the format or what. But I recently got an audio and I devoured it. I really enjoyed the story and the folklore within it. I loved how it all pieced together. The only thing that got me was it was a bit repetitive for most of the book. I was a little confused on some parts- most of the characters and people in the book drink blood but they’re not directly vampires. The explanation at the end helped a lot. Who they came from- gods and goddesses. It was just a little hard for me to grasp. I wish there was more explanation of all that instead of the other repetitive parts.


The two timelines and how they came together left a good suspense and story woven together.

I loved the story, the world building and meeting the different characters. I felt completely immersed in the story and couldn't stop reading it.

Rating: 3 stars!

I'm not sure how I felt about it all once I was done reading. I loved the elements of giving up a piece of yourself for something you love. I loved the found family/friendship. I loved the cross over between the history behind the Queens and the present time. But there was something in the grander picture of the whole book that was missing for me.

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I heard sapphic vampire fantasy, and I was in. It was easy to get swept up in this dark, unique imagining of gods and vampires, told through two different storylines of love and adventure. I would say this novel leans more fantasy with a strong romantic plotlines, as we follow the stories of Favre and Leyna and their quests for love and redemption. I enjoyed both narrators and liked the complimentary ways that their stories unfolded. Personally, I would recommend this book to teen and adult fantasy readers, and I look forward to reading the next installment!

I wanted to read this book immediately based on the premise of vampires, gods, and a sapphic romance. Unfortunately, the writing style didn’t quite work for me. It felt a bit clunky and hard to follow, especially with the shifts in POV and timelines.
That said, if you enjoy a plot driven storyline with an epic love story at the center, this might be exactly what you're looking for.

*Thank you to Patrice Caldwell, St. Martin's Press | Wednesday Books and Netgalley for the digital copy. I am freely leaving my honest review.

Thank you SMP & Wednesday books for the gifted digital copy.

Where Shadows Meet
Patrice Caldwell
Publishing Date: April 1, 2025
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

🎧 Narrator: Alexis Campbell, Khaya Fraites, & Melinda Sewak 🎧

“𝒪𝓃𝒸𝑒 𝓊𝓅𝑜𝓃 𝒶 𝓉𝒾𝓂𝑒 𝓉𝒽𝑒𝓇𝑒 𝓌𝒶𝓈 𝒶 𝓁𝒾𝓉𝓉𝓁𝑒 𝑔𝒾𝓇𝓁 𝓌𝒽𝑜 𝓁𝒾𝓋𝑒𝒹 𝒽𝒶𝓅𝓅𝒾𝓁𝓎 𝑒𝓋𝑒𝓇 𝒶𝒻𝓉𝑒𝓇𝓈… 𝙻𝚒𝚏𝚎 𝚒𝚜 𝚗𝚘𝚝𝚑𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚕𝚒𝚔𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚘𝚜𝚎 𝚝𝚊𝚕𝚎𝚜.”

This book hooked me with vampires and then upped the ante when I learned of all the representation it delivered. We have queer black princesses, angels, vampires, and goddesses, sapphic romance, chronic pain, dysfunctional family dynamics, loss and grief… so many things.

This is a debut YA novel and I think it was a solid one. We get multiple timelines and POVs. Thana and Favre provide the historical background of how we’ve gotten where we are in present day, where we follow Leyla and Najja. There is war, political unrest, power imbalance, and injustices.

This book offers slow burn romance, but even more than that this book is about the sacrifices made for love. How far will one go for love? How much are we willing to lose or give up of oneself? And is it worth it? Seeing this explored in the two different timelines was really interesting.

I flew through this one and the ending definitely left me excited for book two!!

🎧 I read this one with both my eyes and my ears in tandem. The narrators were good but their voices were not different enough to make it easy to immerse yourself in each character. This combined with all of the information that needed to be digested made a tandem read the way to go for me!

This book was well-written and epic and had an interesting concept and bit of world-building. It also never fully pulled me in. I found myself getting bored at times and never really felt invested in the characters or plot. It was definitely a YMMV kind of book though and I can see how other readers could enjoy it more than I did.

I read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All comments are my own.

This book was excellent. I did receive Physical copy as well so I will be reviewing this one in full on my socials.

I liked this! I loved the diversity that we are seeing in books recently! A sapphic novel about vampires, deamons, gods, etc. was a fresh and fabulous idea. I loved the adventure in this book as well. A quest from which you may never return? The perfect amount of danger, if you ask me!

DNF'd at 30%. I really struggled to find my footing in this. Choosing to read the audiobook may have been a mistake as I could not follow what was going on, which character was which, or what this world looked like. None of the characters stood on their own and I kept getting confused whose POV I was in. I might give it another go in future with a physical copy, but I can't get into this right now.

I DNFed this at 16%. It was full of info dumping and characters telling each other things they already knew, and yet the world building was also confusing. I felt like I had little idea of what was going on. I also found the journal sections strange when they could literally function as regular narrative. This book was not for me, unfortunately.

Thank you to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and Wednesday Books for the ARC.

I wanted to love this book so much, but it was MESSY. Not the "morally complex characters making a series of terrible decisions" messy or the "I have no idea what's going on, but I love it" messy, but like...I started confused, ended confused, and spent a whole bunch of time in the middle confused, and I didn't care at any point to make myself un-confused.

Where Shadows Meet is (theoretically) a sapphic vampire novel with a love story that spans the ages, a war between various magical species, and a quest to the Isle of the Dead. I like every single one of those things separately. I like 'em all together, too! But I don't like Where Shadows Meet one bit. And I think it's mainly because there were so many things going on at the same time, and none of the things ever felt like they came together. One of the biggest issues was the dual timelines and multi-POV. Jumping back and forth between a thousand years ago and present day is ambitious enough, but then you throw in journal entries which don't quite connect, a SUPER complicated lore involving 5 vampire families with all different types of powers, angels, some kind of monstrous creatures who eat the vampires/angels/humans (I think?), seers, and a bunch of other things, and you lose me. If I'm confused, and I have a literal degree in English Literature, and I wrote papers on FAULKNER for like three semesters straight, how is a teenager supposed to follow this?

I can't tell you how the characters were. I've got some names - Thana, Layla, Najja -- and I've got some idea of who's human, or vampire, or angel, but I really don't know much else beyond that, because by the time I puzzled out the lore enough to understand what was going on, it was the middle of the book and I'd put it down to go read another ARC.

My rule of thumb is that I don't rate anything less than 3 stars unless it is borderline incoherent, offensive to most reasonable standards, or literal plagiarism. So, going by that rule, this is still 3 stars. Just because I did not enjoy this book doesn't mean that another reader won't, but it does mean that I don't want to spend anymore time reviewing this thing.

Many thanks to NetGalley, Saint Martin's Press/Wednesday Books, and Patrice Caldwell for gifting me this e-ARC in exchange for my honest review! Wednesday Books, baby, I still love you, but this was a big miss!

Interesting beginning to a series. Can't wait to delve back into the world she created. There was a lot to keep me interested and waiting for the sequel.

Where Shadows Meet is what I would catalog as a Fairytale Fantasy about how vampires came to be and how humans adapted to their existence, alongside the Gods wraths. I really loved this story asI felt all the love and devotion that was put into pages to make this story be. I loved how it was spread over 1000 years of history and the deeds of thirsty Gods still had catastrophic consequences a millenium later. Some lines were so powerful, my favorite being, "Once upon a time there was a little girl who loved happily ever afters. Life is nothing like those tales." -Pause, take it in-

Some of the most interesting things that I am taking away from WSM is the mother-daughter relationships she created; the lengths a mother needs to go through to protect her daughter, the sacrifices she has to make, how something can look evil from the outside but only the mother knows that it had to be done out of love for her daughter. So powerful. I also LOVED the role of the ghosts.. I mean, add a ghost into a story and I'm sold!

Caldwell created a ruthless world that I easily projected myself into, my favorite one being The Sea of Sorrow; if you know you know.

I very much look forward to book 2!

A big thank you to NG and the publisher for allowing me to read an early copy of WSM, and I have to admit that in the meantime I received my Fairyloot special edition, which I love, and I look forward to its reread right before book 2 comes out.

4.5 stars