My book bestie gave me a book to read that she saw on BookTok which piqued her interest. The plan was to read this book together and we did start on the same day but I had a bit of free time during the day and blocked out a couple hours to read. Which means I already finished the book but that’s okay, I still love the fact that we can share our opinions about it.

The book I’ve been gifted was ‘Soul of Shadow’ written by Emma Noyes. The BookTok account highlighting this book said this book gave The Vampire Diaries vibes but we both don’t really agree with that. We both got Twilight vibes.

In a small town called Silver Springs a teenager has gone missing, when his shoes are found hanging in a carved-up tree the forest becomes off limits but Charlie seems to be drawn to the forest instead of staying away. When her best friend Lou suggests they do some investigating of their own Charlie doesn’t need to think about it. When they are in the forest they decide to split up and just when Charlie thinks they won’t find anything does she stumble upon more carvings but not just that, she sees a teenager she hasn’t seen before so it has to be someone who just moved here.

Charlie soon finds out that the new guy named Elias is not who he seems to be, when she followed him to his house and heard him chanting in a language she doesn’t know and only seconds later his body slumped to the ground but a dark shadow figure rose up. She can’t believe her eyes, the shadow figure has Elias’ voice and tells her he is a mare, someone that can induce nightmares and inflict panic and pain. He gets a box of special berry’s and tells Charlie that if she wants to see, truly see, she has to eat one berry; eating one will make her see what she can’t see now but it will change her live forever. There is one condition though, she can’t tell anyone about this. When she eats the berry and her vision changes the only thing Elias says before bolting is ‘Welcome to Asgard’.

It looks like hallucinating, seeing colors that don’t exist but also seeing flowers and other things that weren’t there before. There are beautiful things, yes… but also scary things like beasts that definitely shouldn’t exist. When Charlie finally made it home, she tries to learn as much about Norse mythology, a lot about the marvel universe pops up but she needs the real deal. More kids to missing, the only thing that gets found is shoes hanging from a carved-up tree.

Charlie grows closer to Elias even though he’s a mare, he teaches her a lot about mythology and what types of beasts there are but also about Valkyries and the good and the bad. At the homecoming game a draugar (a huge cloaked skeletal creature) chases Charlie and Elias, clawing open Charlies back and side when she wakes up again, she is in Elias’ bedroom and her wounds have been healed.

When a Valkyrie tells Charlie the real story and emphasizes that the world is in danger, a seal conjured by the gods have been showing dozens of cracks; a seal to leave magic out so humans can’t see the magical things within the world, keeping them save from all the things wandering around. But with the cracks in the seal, sometimes magic seeps through and harm can be done. Loki, god of mischief wants the seal broken and destroy the world known as Asgard; and killing all other gods in the process.

This book was such a fast paced read, no smut and very interesting. I’m giving this ⭐⭐⭐⭐.5 stars.