Hello there, thanks for sharing your work!
Takes a bit of courage to ask for a critique for someone new as yourself, hopefully you'll get more insight.
Now let's get down to business.
I was trying to bring a mood of intimacy by taking a photo of how the subject's features blend with their shadow/dark areas.
As cityhunter66 has mentioned, from her pose, it doesn't look intimate. Intimacy should strike as a sort of special feeling/connection between two people, in this case the girl and the photographer. A couple of problems: First, it's the cheek-puffing. As mentioned, she looks more 'playful' in the photograph: A smirk or even a simple smile would've been more relevant and interesting. Second, she's wearing shades. The easiest way to portray an intimate feeling is through the person's eyes. You've probably heard the quote, "The eyes are the windows to a person's soul". Cliche, but it's true.
Now, contrasting and colour blending is difficult if you're new and starting out. One common mistake is to OVER contrast a photograph (I am guilty of this) because it always seems nicer at first glance. But after having to edit a lot of photos through the years, I realise that sometimes it is actually better to REDUCE the contrast depending on the photograph. This photograph, imho, looks over contrasted. I think a way to counter this problem is actually converting the image to black & white (greyscale), which at the same time, addresses the blue/greenish tint problem.
The colours blue/green aren't usually colours I would relate to intimacy. Have you considered using red/pink? Like Eworms said, it's actually conflicting and makes it seem like the opposite of an intimate image. The surprising thing is that even in black & white, relevant images can (and usually strongly) portray intimacy.
As for composition, in my opinion (and from what I have learnt), is to never have the subject of focus directly in the centre of the image (unless called for specifically). From this photo, I can assume you've cropped it intentionally that her face in the centre. Maybe if you didn't crop it into a square, and instead left the top slightly longer (or bottom, depends on the original image), it might have worked better.
Another problem is that she is facing directly towards the camera, which makes it kinda flat (especially after the contrast); The salvation however comes from the background, which keeps the depth. By having her to pose a bit (or even tilting herself slightly), it could make a difference. Also, because of the elements in the background (the other passers-by), it kind of loses that feeling of intimacy as well, because, well, better for it to be a private moment right?
The images were inspired by a book entitled In Praise of the Shadow.
I have searched this online, did you mean the Japanese book "In Praise of Shadows"? In any case I haven't got a chance to read or see any examples so I can't compare to that.
So that's my two-cents on your photograph, and I hope what I've mentioned helps. Don't be discouraged if people can't see what you see: We all have to start somewhere!
Keep practicing, and you'll eventually be able to grasp the understanding of how to make a work work!