Soulmate is a young adult Paranormal Romance/Urban Fantasy novel by L. J. Smith. It's the sixth book in the Night World series and was published in April 1997. It was later reissued in the omnibus Night World 2, along with Dark Angel and The Chosen.
Hannah Snow is about to turn seventeen and has been suffering disturbing dreams foretelling her own death, as well as finding handwritten warnings she doesn't remember writing. Seeking help from a therapist, she discovers the root of her fears may be beyond the mundane. Hannah is soon approached by members of the Night World, some friendly and some not, who inform her she is an Old Soul: a person who has lived and died many times before. Among those who say they to want to help her is Thierry Descoudres, a vampire Elder thousands of years old who claims they are soulmates.
Hannah does feel a strong connection with Thierry but also feels a strongly-ingrained sense of dread around him. Nor can she shake the feeling that something terrible is about to happen to her very soon. Uncertain of who to trust, Hannah realizes that the key to saving herself in the present is to unlock the memories of her past lives.
If you're looking for tropes referring to the concept of soulmates, see One True Love and Red String of Fate.
Tropes found here include:
- Abandoned Mine: The climax takes place in an abandoned mine deep in the Nevada desert where Maya has taken Hannah after abducting her. Hannah is able to find a piece of quartz and fashion a blade out of it, which she then uses to whittle a piece of wood into a stake. She also considers knocking down a beam to collapse the roof on herself if worst comes to worst, as it's better than what Maya has in store for her. Given that the entire plot began back when people lived in caves, it's also appropriate it finishes underground.
- Ancient Egypt: Hannah's second incarnation, Ha-nahkt, lived in Ancient Egypt in an unspecified time period, with a flashback revealing some of her life and her death in that time. In this lifetime she was a priestess dedicated to the goddess Isis.
- Bad Samaritan:
- Maya. She comes to Hannah's home on the pretext of warning her to stay away from Thierry because he's dangerous but it was actually to gain access to her house - getting through the protective wards that require her to be invited - and thus get close enough to poison Hannah against Thierry and attack her. This is far from the first time she's done this, too.
- When Hannah goes to Las Vegas to search for Thierry, she spots a man she realizes is a vampire and asks him for directions to Thierry's house. The vampire agrees to take her, only to lure her into an alleyway to attack her. However, he stops when he sees Hannah is wearing a ring with a black rose - the symbol of made vampires - and realizes she's actually someone important to Thierry. He then actually helps her reach Thierry's mansion, if only so she won't report him to Thierry.
- Breaking and Bloodsucking: After Hannah kicks him out, Thierry later returns and breaks into Hannah's bedroom, where she finds him waiting for her. He attacks her and forcibly drinks her blood, though she drives him off by stabbing him through the hand with a pencil. It's later revealed it was Maya, who had taken Thierry's form.
- Cue the Sun: The novel ends with Hannah and Thierry watching the sunrise together. As they note, this is significant because it's the first time in any of her incarnations Hannah has seen the sun rise on her 17th birthday, symbolizing a new beginning and happier future for the couple.
- Earn Your Happy Ending: After centuries of loss and suffering, Hannah and Thierry finally get a happy ending when Hannah kills Maya. With Maya gone, Hannah and Thierry can be together in peace and Hannah can at last live a long, fulfilling life.
- Foreshadowing: When Thierry attacks Hannah in her bedroom, he seems to retreat far more easily than expected after Hannah stabs him with a pencil; while the wound is painful it's still only a pencil, Hannah doesn't have any other means of defending herself and she's weak from blood loss. Yet Thierry stops attacking her and leaves, promising to come back for her. It makes a lot more sense after it's revealed it was Maya disguised as Thierry and that her plan isn't to kill Hannah outright, but to turn her into a vampire first, which will require repeated blood exchanges.
- Hope Spot: After realizing the truth, Hannah travels to Las Vegas to find Thierry; while he's disappeared she's given shelter at his mansion, where she's surrounded by guards who will do everything in their power to defend her. All she needs to do is sit tight and wait for Thierry to return. But then she goes out to the balcony for some fresh air and encounters a giant bat...
- In Medias Res: The novel opens with the line "The werewolves broke in while Hannah Snow was in the psychologist's office." The story then flashes back a few minutes to explain why Hannah is visiting a psychologist and a bit of her backstory, leading up to the moment two werewolves smash through the office window and start fighting. Hannah quickly deduces that both werewolves were looking for her and that one is protecting her from the other, establishing right away she has an unconscious connection to the Night World.
- Internal Reveal: The narrative makes it clear that there is something off about Maya's claim and Hannah's memories of Thierry being responsible for her deaths, though it takes much longer for Hannah herself to figure out what's happening. In particular, the reader finds out long before Hannah that it was really Maya who she stabbed in self-defense, after Thierry confronts her over it, but as Hannah didn't witness this conversation she remains in the dark a little longer.
- Must Be Invited: This doesn't usually apply to vampires in Night World, but Thierry places a special charm made by witches on Hannah's property so that only Night People she invites can enter. Unfortunately, he failed to explain this to her before Maya turns up and Hannah unwittingly invites her inside for an ostensibly friendly chat.
- Not Me This Time: Thierry did kill Hannah in her first life, but it wasn't intentional and he has never harmed her again. All the other times, Maya had been framing Thierry for Hannah's murder.
- Origins Episode: This novel delves into the closely-linked backstories of both Thierry - a Night World Elder - and Maya - the progenitor of the vampire race - who had either appeared or been mentioned several times in previous books. Ash had briefly mentioned in Secret Vampire that Thierry was turned by an ancestor of his "back when people lived in caves", which gets expanded upon here, while in Spellbinder Thea had relayed the legend of Maya and Hellewise, which we see from more of a personal, first-hand perspective here.
- Our Nudity Is Different:
- When Hana first meets Thierry, or Theorn as he was known then, he's wearing nothing but a loincloth. It's mentioned that Hana is used to seeing people wear very little as her Stone Age tribe have few taboos around nudity, though she still gets a bit flustered seeing him nearly naked, underlining her growing attraction to him despite him supposedly being a demon.
- Ha-nahkt is mentioned as wearing a long skirt, a jewelled necklace and absolutely nothing to cover her chest while performing her priestess duties, which she's unbothered by even when encountering strangers. It was common in Ancient Egypt for women to go topless.
- The Pen Is Mightier: Thierry corners Hannah in her bedroom and forcibly drinks her blood. Hannah gets backed up against her desk and is able to grab a pencil and drive it through Thierry's hand; she threatens to shove the next pencil through his heart. As Hannah realizes, pencils are actually more effective weapons against vampires than you'd think because they're made of wood, which is toxic to vampires if it gets into their bloodstream; wounds inflicted by wood take much longer for them to heal despite their Healing Factor.
- Poor Communication Kills: A lot of the plot happens because of Thierry's poor-planning and lack of clear communication with Hannah. He's aware that Maya, his Ax-Crazy Stalker with a Crush, is coming to kill Hannah and frame him for it, as this has happened multiple times over the centuries. While Thierry is understandably wary of scaring Hannah given he doesn't know how much she knows (and states a previous attempt to just carry her off ended disastrously), Thierry is still very vague about what's going on and doesn't properly explain that she's in grave danger (or at least have Lupe or his other agents explain this to her) so they can make a safety plan. He also gives her a ring with protective charms and has wards put around her house to prevent anyone from entering without her invitation...which he doesn't explain, either. As a result, Hannah continues assuming that Thierry has been killing her and tells him to buzz off. She refuses to wear the ring and she invites Maya into her house when she pops round to offer her advice about Thierry; Thierry even acknowledges how stupid the latter was, because of course Hannah would invite a seemingly kindly stranger into her property (especially as she didn't know about the wards). Thus, Maya is able to continue attacking and manipulating Hannah, and it takes Hannah much longer to figure out the truth herself.
- Reincarnation Friendship: It's revealed that Hannah's best friend Chess is also an Old Soul, though unlike Hannah she doesn't start to consciously remember her past lives. She and Hannah have been best friends since the Stone Age, when Chess was called Ket. She was also a priestess of Isis alongside Hannah in Ancient Egypt. Although it's not mentioned explicitly, it's implied that Chess and Hannah keep finding and befriending each other in all their lives. Hannah considers telling Chess they're both Old Souls, though she puts it off to protect her from the Night World, while at one point Chess states she wants them to be "best friends forever", not realizing it isn't hyperbole.
- Reincarnation Romance: Between soulmates Thierry and Hannah; Thierry is a vampire and so has continuously lived for thousands of years, while Hannah is an Old Soul who is continuously reincarnated each time she dies.
- The Reveal:
- Using hypnotherapy, Hannah explores her Past-Life Memories and finally learns what's really been happening between her, Thierry and Maya: Thierry accidentally killed Hannah in her first life as Hana of the Three Rivers and vowed never to kill again as per her final request. However, Maya took advantage of this and her witch powers to murder Hannah while disguised as Thierry in every one of Hannah's lives, causing her to believe Thierry has been killing her and making her fear him.
- Maya talks cryptically about how things will be different this time and that she's found a way to "break the cycle". It's eventually revealed she intends to turn Hannah into a vampire and then kill her, which will prevent Hannah from ever reincarnating again (as for unknown reasons vampires can't reincarnate).
- The Shrink: At the start of the novel, Hannah has booked sessions with a therapist, Paul Winfield, as she believes her nightmares and note-writing are a sign of mental deterioration. She's actually Paul's first patient, as he's only recently become qualified. Paul initially appears to be the "Well-meaning but ineffective" variety, as while he wants to help Hannah he's inexperienced and quickly goes into denial about her issues having a potentially supernatural cause. However, Hannah notes in the end that she actually thinks Paul was genuinely helpful, as his hypnotherapy sessions helped her recover her memories and realize the truth about Maya and Thierry.
- Starcrossed Lovers: Thierry and Hannah are actually destined to be together but have been kept apart by Maya, who hunts down and kills Hannah in each of her lives to prevent them being together. In Hannah's second life, she was also a priestess of Isis, who were forbidden to form attachments to men. Thierry told her that they could be together in her next life rather than her having to give up her life in the temple although Maya ended up murdering her for the first time shortly after.
- Van Helsing Hate Crimes: A complicated example; in Hannah's first life in the Stone Age, her tribe captured Thierry after they caught him drinking a child's blood. Many tribespeople were convinced he was a demon and wanted to kill him, though Hana persuaded them to spare him if only so their shaman, Old Mother, could decide what to do, as she saw that Thierry was remorseful and hadn't tried to attack anyone else; she also deduced he only drinks blood because he can't eat anything else. When they decided to kill Thierry anyway, Thierry didn't try to fight back, at least until they realized he seemingly couldn't die, as his vampiric nature enabled him to swiftly heal from most wounds. Despite Hana's pleas to let Thierry go, several tribespeople began torturing Thierry in an attempt to kill him which finally prompted Thierry to snap and go on a bloody rampage. While it's understandable the tribe would be wary of Thierry, he initially tried to avoid hurting anyone and he's clearly capable of reason and empathy, which several of the tribespeople conveniently ignore.
