Thank you NetGalley for the audiobook arc. I love vampire tropes but this one did nothing for me slow to start. The following along via the audiobook was a little confusing at times when they jumps from person to person, Ended up DNF’ing at 20%. I tried getting into the book but just couldn’t

A book that combines many classic fantasy aspects in new and interesting ways. It includes vampires, royalty, gods, and magic.

Romance Type: Sapphic, slow burn

Spice: very little, fade to black

Themes: Grief, childhood trauma, chronic illness, fate

Perspective: Multiple perspectives with time hops

Disclaimer: recieved ARC from giveaway

I was hoping for a little more from Where Shadows Meet by Patrice Caldwell. One of my favorite genres is vampire fantasy and I am thrilled to see all the vampire books releasing in 2025, including Where Shadows Meet. However, this story fell flat for me. The world building was a little overwhelming and the romance between the two central characters lacked depth and their relationship felt forced rather than naturally evolving. Hopefully book 2 will redeem the series.

Thank you to NetGalley and Wednesday Books for the advanced listening copy in exchange for an honest review. These thoughts are my own.

DNF @38%.

I really wanted to like <i>Where Shadows Meet</i> by Patrice Caldwell—the premise sounded fantastic—but the execution just didn’t work for me. The way the story is structured, with multiple POVs across different timelines, made it difficult to fully immerse myself in the world. Instead of feeling drawn into the narrative, I found myself needing to work extra hard to keep track of what was happening and when.

Worse, a huge chunk of the text is dedicated to excessive world-building exposition being thrown at the reader, which unfortunately comes at the expense of meaningful character connection. Because of this, I never felt much reason to care for any of the characters, especially when the story did shift to action. Moments that were clearly supposed to be emotionally impactful—especially when characters died—fell flat because there just wasn’t enough time spent establishing real attachment.

This last bit is rather nitpicky, but the audiobook was advertised as a multi-cast performance, which I’ve grown to prefer in a more graphic audio format—where we get multiple narrators performing the characters (ideally with sound effect, though this isn’t needed for all)—and this was not that, but instead just alternating chapters based on the POV. Which, I guess? But that doesn’t feel very full cast to me, making one of the huge selling points for why I even requested this novel in the first place feel like a massive disappointment.

Ultimately, between the scattered structure and lack of character investment, I just couldn’t push myself to continue.

This book I had to listen to as an audio. It was very well written and the story was intriguing.
This was a little harder to follow because you’re jumping back-and-forth in time following the main characters. The closest I can blame this with would be an almost Greek God, other gods mixed with vampires.

A story of goddesses, vampires, magic and war.

A long time ago, Favre cut off her wings so that the girl she loved (Thana) loved could have powers. Theresa sacrifice though included losing the sun and led them to have to feed off of blood of others and a cursed life.

I was so excited for this, description had so many exciting elements, sometimes too descriptive of writing and not enough action.

This may just be one of those series where the first book is the worst book and is there for foundational knowledge. Would read more but this was just okay for me.

Great narration!

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ALC in exchange for an honest review. Release date 4/1/25.

I had a tough time with this one as I was constantly confused and could not connect to the characters at all as I didn’t understand the motivation for anything happening.

I think k that the book will find its audience but ai was not it which is why I went right down the middle with my rating. However I did consume the Audiobook so I’ll focus on that.

The production was done well. The sound quality was consistent and clean. It was a multicast narration by Alexis Campbell; Khaya Fraites, and Melinda Sewak who all did a good job albeit with different skill levels. I don’t know who is who unfortunately in order to highlight one of the actors who did an exceptional job with their recitation.

So if you’re going to give this one a go, I can recommend the audiobook from the production aspect! The book comes out April 1, 2025


I am thankful to have gotten a complimentary audio ALC from MacMillian Audio through NetGalley to read which gave me the opportunity to voluntarily leave a review.

My rating system since GoodReads doesn’t have partial stars

⭐️ Hated it
⭐️⭐️ Had a lot of trouble, prose issues, really not my cup of tea (potentially DNF’d or thought about it)
⭐️⭐️⭐️ Meh, it was an ok read but nothing special
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Really enjoyed it! Would recommend to others
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ Outstanding! Will circle back and read again

⭐️⭐️⭐️

This story was so interesting and I loved that is was Sapphic.

The world building was very good. I love that there was two different love stories going on at the same time that were so similar because they were between two beings that were the same in each relationship.

I was a little confused about what the conflict actually was. I know we were not wanting to wake up this princess/queen and we were trying to prevent the queen from getting her way but what is the reason? Because she was a crazy tyrant? I’m just a little confused. I did love the story, but was just a little confused on the plot. I was constantly rereading chapters to understand.

The ending is a huge cliffhanger. I know there is going to be a spectrum book. I’m not sure if I would continue the story however, I do think that the premise, the world building and the lore was written really well. So overall, I liked the writing I just was not fully invested in the plot.

I did listen to the audio. I thought the narration was fine. I had no issues with the narrator at all. I thought they did a great job.

Thanks for the gifted ALC!!

This is a soft dnf for me! The narrators are really hard to distinguish and the world building is already pretty intense so I’m having a hard time following. I def want to pick up a physical copy of this book!!

I really enjoyed this. I am a sucker for a vampire romance and this was amazing. I loved the fantasy aspect and the world building was amazing. This book had two amazing romances. Everything about this perfect and I just solidly enjoyed this.

firstly, thank you to the publisher for an arc and alc!

unfortunately, dnf @ 56%

i think once i realized how uninterested i was, i should have stopped reading, but i was hoping i would enjoy this unique twist on vampirism.

i did appreciate the sapphic vampires, despite my overall disinterest.

as for the audiobooks, i enjoyed the narrators!

this book will definitely find its audience, but its not me

Started strong but lost me bit by bit as we adventured on. The world building was deep and interesting at first and the book even started with quite a bang, but I just started to lose interest and am definitely not sure how you would milk this into a duology. I think a rewrite into a standalone would have felt less like it was dragging. The worst part was the characters also started off very strong and interesting, but I think it just lacked consequential conflict throughout. There were lots of chances to add it, but it just wasn't there. The narration was interesting, having 3 narrators. They all really tried to keep immersion high and I would say that was successful.

The following didn't affect my rating but was just pure second-hand embarrassment for the author. Author's weird behavior on GR includes 5star self-rating and monologuing while blaming everything but the book being really mid which is super common for a debut. I read through a lot of the feedback and it was all very valid and evident to anyone who read the book without bias. Like she said herself, reviews are reader spaces. If she can't handle them, maybe she shouldn't be hanging out in them. Originally, I was going to be open to book two as I have actually had this on my TBR for ages, but I think I will pass.

ALC provided by Macmillan Audio via Netgalley. All opinions are my own.

I love when there are multiple POVs and multiple narrators! All of the narrators were good, there was nothing totally standout about any of the performances but I really enjoyed listening to this one along as I read it. It's a great quality audiobook!

Book review: When I heard Black sapphic vampires I was excited! The premise was intriguing, and I think the book was pretty unique. I enjoyed the backstory with the creation of vampires, and I liked all of the other magical characters as well. The big questions of what would you give up for love, and what would it cost you, what would the ones you love give up for you, etc. are explored, which is especially interesting when paired with vampires and seers.

As I was reading the prologue I was really invested in that story, and when I started the actual book I was kind of disappointed that the book didn't follow that story, and instead jumped ahead and added in a bunch of new characters. I feel like I'd have loved a whole book with the story from the prologue. I also think the world building could have been more cohesive.

This is the kind of book that I think could have been so damn good with another round of edits. It has so much going for it - a dual timeline with sapphic relationships, powerful queens, a war over a thousand years - but it kept getting in its own way with pacing that was all over the place and so much info dumping. This was a frustrating read because I could see the book it wanted to be, but unfortunately it was an uneven experience.

Unfortunately, this book wasn’t for me. The dual timelines and lack of distinct characters made it difficult to follow. While there were some interesting elements, the first 60% felt messy and confusing. I won’t be continuing.

Based on the cover and blurb for Where Shadows Meet, I had incredibly high, maybe too high of expectations. Staring with what I liked about this book - I loved the representation that Caldwell brought to this story. I’m also a huge fan of morally grey characters which Caldwell used well in this story. I also appreciated that Caldwell leaned into the darker and more violent nature of vampires. There were also parts that fell flat for me. I felt there was a mixture of both trying to do too much and also not doing enough depending on which element we’re focusing on. For this being a fantasy book, I wanted way more world building and the lore established earlier in the book. There just wasn’t enough world building for me in general but maybe that was by design since it’s the first in a series. I also felt like the book was all over the place with how the story was introduced - it jumped between story telling perspective, characters, and using journal entries to get information across. I did feel that this book ended on a high note that sets up book 2 quite well. For the audiobook, I did love the choice to use multiple narrators. With how the story was told, I think it would’ve been impossible to keep track of everything had only one narrator been used. I also felt that the narrators were captivating in how they told the story making for an enjoyable listening experience.