Day’s YA: DREAMS OF RUIN

DREAMS OF RUIN by Emma Noyes
9781250343024
11/17/2026
Wednesday Books
Ages 13-18

E-galley available on Edelweiss and NetGalley

The time has come: DREAMS OF RUIN brings us the thrilling conclusion to Emma Noyes’s magnificent Soul of Shadow trilogy! Charlie Hudson has woken up after her Trial, and it’s quickly apparent that nothing will ever be the same as it once was. The king of the gods is trying to destroy Asgard, Charlie and her brother are trapped in Helheim, and she’s become the monster she hates most—a night mare. Now she must train her new shadow magic (she’d rather not!) alongside mares who would turn her over to the enemy immediately if they learned of her true identity. Her one hope is Elias Everhart, the mare who was once her enemy but has slowly become one of her closest allies, and one of the people she cares for the most. He’s planning to help her train her new abilities, but she quickly realizes that her magic is malfunctioning… and being near Elias only makes the darkness in her grow more consuming every day. It’s a race against time to stabilize her powers and save Asgard, and if that threat isn’t enough to kill her, love might be. After all, the only thing worse than becoming a mare is loving one. 

This is my official thank you to Emma Noyes for creating such an addicting, immersive world, and characters that I have become so attached to. I have been eagerly awaiting DREAMS OF RUIN since the second I finished and put down HEART OF MISCHIEF. It was the perfect cliffhanger ending to make me anxious to learn what would happen next, and DREAMS OF RUIN certainly did not disappoint. It didn’t even skip a beat—I picked it up and was immediately drawn back into the world like I had never left the story for a single second. The twists and turns kicked off immediately, and I had a hard time putting the book down once I had it in my hands. Saying that I never knew what was coming next would be an understatement!

One of my favorite parts of this series is the strong sense of found family, and how much I feel like I know and care for each and every character. There are character arcs galore, and Charlie’s growth in particular has been so amazing to follow—with every book she becomes stronger in her sense of self, her confidence, and her courageousness, refusing to lose who she really is in the midst of darkness, and never backing down from a fight. And as much as I love Charlie on her own, getting to watch her relationship with Elias continue was the cherry on top. It’s the best will-they-won’t-they romance I’ve read in a long time, and their banter is quite literally top tier. Elias’s snarky, confident, and teasing one-liners even had me laughing out loud when I was reading at the gym while walking on the treadmill. Plus, getting pieces of Elias’s POV made the pull between them even more satisfying to watch unfold. And of course, the entire cast of characters felt like family to me: from Mason, to Lou and Abigail, to Henry, and even to Loki. 

I haven’t been this sad to say goodbye to a fantasy world in a long time, but I know that I’ll return to it again and again. This series brought me so much joy, but it was served with plenty of high stakes, edge-of-my-seat twists and tension. If you love Norse mythology-inspired stories, and especially if you love THE VAMPIRE DIARIES and TWILIGHT (and all of the yearning and morally gray MMCs that come with them), this is an extremely bingeable series that you won’t want to miss. There’s magic, gods, monsters, and the most perfect slow-burn, tension-filled romance you can imagine.  

<3 Margo

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