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A review by nickoliver
Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin
adventurous
tense
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? No
1.0
When I went into this book, I was a bit apprehensive. I knew people from both ends of the spectrum - some who loved it, some who detested it, and I didn't know where I would fall. I do have to say I did kind of quietly suspect - or fear - that I wasn't going to be obsessed with it. However, I didn't think I would abhor it quite so much.
The only thing that really worked for me was the magic. I liked that there were different types of witches who had different ways of using magic - for example, Coco was a Dame Rouge, who used blood, while Lou was a Dame Blanche, who decidedly did not -, and the almost gritty sacrifices some witches had to do thrilled me. Having to lose one of your senses, or a memory, or having your fingers break if you wanted to use magic to open locks, was dark and unusual and definitely up my alley.
Unfortunately, that was the only part of the book I found joy in. Everything else was so bad and infuriating that I was incapable of having a remotely good time while reading this.
Let's start about one of the worst things: the main characters. The story was told from two POVs: Lou's, the aforementioned Dame Blanche who had fled from a destiny that would've led to her death, and Reid, a so-called Chasseur - a witch hunter -, who had been raised by the Archbishop, a man he worshiped who hunted witches relentlessly and installed the same hatred in all the Chasseurs. Neither of these characters was very appealing, albeit in different ways. And while Lou was mostly just frustrating, I hated Reid with my entire being.
Throughout the whole book, Reid had but one emotion: anger. It felt like he was angry at least once every two pages, and it was often coupled with possessiveness over Lou - a trait I've always despised in male characters. The only other personality trait he had apart from that was "repressed" - which partly made sense, since he was raised in a misogynistic church and was very pious, so obviously, seeing a woman act differently than he was taught - aka a woman with her own mind, who cussed a lot and didn't want to obey him just because she was forced to marry him - must've been difficult. But it was hard not to find him pathetic and laughable when he lost his mind every time Lou said "shit" or sang pub songs about women with big tits. Seeing Lou in pants broke his brain. I honestly kept thinking that Reid needed to get laid, or he'd spontaneously combust. And I am asexual and have very little sexual desire, so if I want a character to have sex, they must be unbelievably repressed.
Aside from angry and repressed, however, Reid had absolutely no personality traits. Except maybe tall. Unfortunately, "Serpent & Dove" was one of these books that just had to hammer it home every two pages how giant Reid was, as if Mahurin thought that'd make him more interesting. But no. He was possibly one of the most boring male characters/love interests I ever had the misfortune to meet in a book. At no point in the story did I root for him to be with Lou, because at no point did I understand what she saw in him. I despised him. Overall, he had less chapters from his POV, which I was mightily glad about.
Like I said, I didn't like either main character, so Lou missed the mark for me too. I did enjoy her at first, admittedly. I liked that she was self-confident and brash and spoke her mind. However, after a while, she got tiring to read from. She started to feel more like a caricature of what a cheeky, loud-mouthed female main character was supposed to be like. There was so much emphasis on how much she swore and how little she had in common with a "good" woman - how much of a heathen she actually was -, that the more Mahurin mentioned it, the less I believed her.
Plus, for a witch who seemingly despised Chasseurs at the beginning of the book, she was very quick to throw off her principles and see all the Chasseurs as possible good guys, especially Reid himself. The Chasseurs' entire aim was to kill every witch they could get their hands on. At one point, Lou literally saw him burn a witch at the stake. And while she was always upset about being a witch killer - as she always blamed herself for the action of a few men like Reid -, she still thought Reid was inherently good and therefore the Chasseurs were redeemable. She was never on the witches' side, and she wanted to stop them from trying to execute their plan.
Admittedly, superficially, it made sense. In order for their plan to work, the villain had to sacrifice Lou. Lou had to die for the witches to find salvation. Obviously, Lou wouldn't support that. However, not wanting to help the witches didn't mean that the men - the Archbishop, the king's family, the Chasseurs - were in the right to slaughter their kind. It wasn't quite so black-and-white to me. You could want to hide from the villain to save yourself and see the wrongs the men had done to the witches.
Because the reasoning behind the villains' plan was very logical to me and I didn't understand how easy Lou could go from hating Chasseurs to loving one and thinking that meant all of them could be made to tolerate witches, I couldn't root for Lou, Reid, and their friends. Especially the last part of the book, where a lot of the action was, made that obvious for me. I wanted them to win because they were the protagonists, but I sympathised so much with the witches and hated the men so much for what they stood for that I found myself in an inner conflict that I don't think was supposed to be there.
The romance was very prevalent in the story and a bit of a driving force of it. Since I disliked Lou and Reid, however, I didn't care about it. Which obviously made a big chunk of the book unbearable to read for me. What made it worse was the fact that a lot of it came out of nowhere. Obviously, I knew from the beginning that Lou and Reid were going to fall in love. They embodied the classic enemies-to-lovers trope. But their development from "We absolutely loathe each other" to "We love each other and would die for each other" was non-existent. One page, they hated each other, the next, they suddenly had feelings. I couldn't understand where the switch came from.
Even worse was that Mahurin did that same spiel with several other relationships. Lou and the Archbishop suddenly started talking like they liked each other despite never having a conversation before that alluded at that. Reid went from hating a character and refusing to forgive them for something they'd done to mourning them in a few pages without there being an explanation as to why his feelings suddenly changed. I swear to God, I felt like I was being gaslit by this damn book.
The side characters gave me grief precisely because they were side characters. I liked so many of them more than Lou and Reid that I would've preferred to see some of them as the protagonists. Coco was delightful, brazen, and also queer, which made her much more interesting to begin with. And some of the men actually had a lot more personality than Reid that I was sad to not see them in a main character role. Ansel was the only Chasseur I liked, for he was sweet and genuinely good and would've made a much better love interest (not for Lou, specifically; just in general). Bas would've been great to see more of; he was a riot and I was mad that Mahurin didn't play more with him. And Beau, while annoying and perverted at times, had a surprising redemption moment during the climax. The fact that Mahurin kept choosing to prioritise Lou and Reid's relationship over any of them made me want to weep.
The story had several plot twists in store for me, but literally all of them were so damn predictable. Not necessarily as in "I saw them a mile coming," but they were so generic for a fantasy book that they were laughable instead of impressive. And sometimes, they actually did make me laugh out loud just because they were added so thoughtlessly into the story. For example, Lou realised something about another character because of their eye colour and the way they'd glanced at a ring she wore (one whose story she'd been told not too long ago). And it was madness , because no sane person would just come to that conclusion on their own for those reasons alone. You'd be laughed out of the house.
The world was very predictably misogynistic. Like I mentioned, the religion of the Archbishop and the Chasseurs taught hatred toward women. It also read very historical, like if this was set in our world, it would've been no further than the 1800s. And while I don't hate misogynistic worlds as a principle (though I am getting very tired of encountering them in every single YA fantasy book), it did bother me that Mahurin did seemingly nothing to combat those views. For example, while Lou was your stereotypical tough heroine, with all her swearing and not wanting to obey men, the rest of the story didn't follow that structure. Everything was always a woman's fault. A witch burning at the stakes was followed up with Lou blaming herself for it, even if it was Reid who was the one doing it. And while, in the moment, it made sense that Lou did that, Mahurin also didn't try to later put the blame where it belonged. Especially Reid was constantly portrayed as a good guy and a hero despite all the bad things he said and did. It drove me up the wall.
Aside from all that, the world was also very inspired by French. Characters had French names - Lou Larue, Coco Monvoisin - and French words were used in dialogue - Madame, Mademoiselle, chocolat , just to name a few. And those little sprinkles of French bothered me more than they had any right to. Mostly because it made it seem like the characters were bilingual, but they never talked actual sentences that the author later translated. It was just always words. And the few times Mahurin tried to incorporate something deeper into the story, it didn't work. For example, Reid thought that Lou's last name, Larue, must've been fake because it was actually a word - la rue , meaning the street. But so was Monvoisin , and no one ever went up to Coco and told her that, um, actually, that just meant my neighbour , so it couldn't possibly be your real name! It felt very odd to me. I would've liked to know why French, precisely, and it annoyed me that it felt so random.
I was a bit surprised about the inclusion of smut in this. Obviously, it wasn't the dirtiest, nastiest thing I've ever read, not by a mile, but it went further than just fade-to-black, and that threw me off, especially since Goodreads has this classified as YA. It didn't really bother me, but it did make me a tad bit uncomfortable. Though maybe that was just the fact that Mahurin made me read smut that included Reid freaking Diggory.
Overall, this was just a pain in the ass to read. Like I said, I didn't expect I'd love this book, but I also didn't expect it to be so horrible. It also read like a Wattpad story, for some inexplicable reason. (Have I ever read anything on Wattpad? No. But it gives me those vibes.)
The only thing that really worked for me was the magic. I liked that there were different types of witches who had different ways of using magic - for example, Coco was a Dame Rouge, who used blood, while Lou was a Dame Blanche, who decidedly did not -, and the almost gritty sacrifices some witches had to do thrilled me. Having to lose one of your senses, or a memory, or having your fingers break if you wanted to use magic to open locks, was dark and unusual and definitely up my alley.
Unfortunately, that was the only part of the book I found joy in. Everything else was so bad and infuriating that I was incapable of having a remotely good time while reading this.
Let's start about one of the worst things: the main characters. The story was told from two POVs: Lou's, the aforementioned Dame Blanche who had fled from a destiny that would've led to her death, and Reid, a so-called Chasseur - a witch hunter -, who had been raised by the Archbishop, a man he worshiped who hunted witches relentlessly and installed the same hatred in all the Chasseurs. Neither of these characters was very appealing, albeit in different ways. And while Lou was mostly just frustrating, I hated Reid with my entire being.
Throughout the whole book, Reid had but one emotion: anger. It felt like he was angry at least once every two pages, and it was often coupled with possessiveness over Lou - a trait I've always despised in male characters. The only other personality trait he had apart from that was "repressed" - which partly made sense, since he was raised in a misogynistic church and was very pious, so obviously, seeing a woman act differently than he was taught - aka a woman with her own mind, who cussed a lot and didn't want to obey him just because she was forced to marry him - must've been difficult. But it was hard not to find him pathetic and laughable when he lost his mind every time Lou said "shit" or sang pub songs about women with big tits. Seeing Lou in pants broke his brain. I honestly kept thinking that Reid needed to get laid, or he'd spontaneously combust. And I am asexual and have very little sexual desire, so if I want a character to have sex, they must be unbelievably repressed.
Aside from angry and repressed, however, Reid had absolutely no personality traits. Except maybe tall. Unfortunately, "Serpent & Dove" was one of these books that just had to hammer it home every two pages how giant Reid was, as if Mahurin thought that'd make him more interesting. But no. He was possibly one of the most boring male characters/love interests I ever had the misfortune to meet in a book. At no point in the story did I root for him to be with Lou, because at no point did I understand what she saw in him. I despised him. Overall, he had less chapters from his POV, which I was mightily glad about.
Like I said, I didn't like either main character, so Lou missed the mark for me too. I did enjoy her at first, admittedly. I liked that she was self-confident and brash and spoke her mind. However, after a while, she got tiring to read from. She started to feel more like a caricature of what a cheeky, loud-mouthed female main character was supposed to be like. There was so much emphasis on how much she swore and how little she had in common with a "good" woman - how much of a heathen she actually was -, that the more Mahurin mentioned it, the less I believed her.
Plus, for a witch who seemingly despised Chasseurs at the beginning of the book, she was very quick to throw off her principles and see all the Chasseurs as possible good guys, especially Reid himself. The Chasseurs' entire aim was to kill every witch they could get their hands on. At one point, Lou literally saw him burn a witch at the stake. And while she was always upset about being a witch killer - as she always blamed herself for the action of a few men like Reid -, she still thought Reid was inherently good and therefore the Chasseurs were redeemable. She was never on the witches' side, and she wanted to stop them from trying to execute their plan.
Admittedly, superficially, it made sense. In order for their plan to work, the villain had to sacrifice Lou. Lou had to die for the witches to find salvation. Obviously, Lou wouldn't support that. However, not wanting to help the witches didn't mean that the men -
Because the reasoning behind the villains' plan was very logical to me and I didn't understand how easy Lou could go from hating Chasseurs to loving one and thinking that meant all of them could be made to tolerate witches, I couldn't root for Lou, Reid, and their friends. Especially the last part of the book, where a lot of the action was, made that obvious for me. I wanted them to win because they were the protagonists, but I sympathised so much with the witches and hated the men so much for what they stood for that I found myself in an inner conflict that I don't think was supposed to be there.
The romance was very prevalent in the story and a bit of a driving force of it. Since I disliked Lou and Reid, however, I didn't care about it. Which obviously made a big chunk of the book unbearable to read for me. What made it worse was the fact that a lot of it came out of nowhere. Obviously, I knew from the beginning that Lou and Reid were going to fall in love. They embodied the classic enemies-to-lovers trope. But their development from "We absolutely loathe each other" to "We love each other and would die for each other" was non-existent. One page, they hated each other, the next, they suddenly had feelings. I couldn't understand where the switch came from.
Even worse was that Mahurin did that same spiel with several other relationships. Lou and the Archbishop suddenly started talking like they liked each other despite never having a conversation before that alluded at that. Reid went from hating a character and refusing to forgive them for something they'd done to mourning them in a few pages without there being an explanation as to why his feelings suddenly changed. I swear to God, I felt like I was being gaslit by this damn book.
The side characters gave me grief precisely because they were side characters. I liked so many of them more than Lou and Reid that I would've preferred to see some of them as the protagonists. Coco was delightful, brazen, and also queer, which made her much more interesting to begin with. And some of the men actually had a lot more personality than Reid that I was sad to not see them in a main character role. Ansel was the only Chasseur I liked, for he was sweet and genuinely good and would've made a much better love interest (not for Lou, specifically; just in general). Bas would've been great to see more of; he was a riot and I was mad that Mahurin didn't play more with him. And Beau, while annoying and perverted at times, had a surprising redemption moment during the climax. The fact that Mahurin kept choosing to prioritise Lou and Reid's relationship over any of them made me want to weep.
The story had several plot twists in store for me, but literally all of them were so damn predictable. Not necessarily as in "I saw them a mile coming," but they were so generic for a fantasy book that they were laughable instead of impressive. And sometimes, they actually did make me laugh out loud just because they were added so thoughtlessly into the story. For example, Lou realised something about another character because of their eye colour and the way they'd glanced at a ring she wore (one whose story she'd been told not too long ago). And it was madness , because no sane person would just come to that conclusion on their own for those reasons alone. You'd be laughed out of the house.
The world was very predictably misogynistic. Like I mentioned, the religion of the Archbishop and the Chasseurs taught hatred toward women. It also read very historical, like if this was set in our world, it would've been no further than the 1800s. And while I don't hate misogynistic worlds as a principle (though I am getting very tired of encountering them in every single YA fantasy book), it did bother me that Mahurin did seemingly nothing to combat those views. For example, while Lou was your stereotypical tough heroine, with all her swearing and not wanting to obey men, the rest of the story didn't follow that structure. Everything was always a woman's fault. A witch burning at the stakes was followed up with Lou blaming herself for it, even if it was Reid who was the one doing it. And while, in the moment, it made sense that Lou did that, Mahurin also didn't try to later put the blame where it belonged. Especially Reid was constantly portrayed as a good guy and a hero despite all the bad things he said and did. It drove me up the wall.
Aside from all that, the world was also very inspired by French. Characters had French names - Lou Larue, Coco Monvoisin - and French words were used in dialogue - Madame, Mademoiselle, chocolat , just to name a few. And those little sprinkles of French bothered me more than they had any right to. Mostly because it made it seem like the characters were bilingual, but they never talked actual sentences that the author later translated. It was just always words. And the few times Mahurin tried to incorporate something deeper into the story, it didn't work. For example, Reid thought that Lou's last name, Larue, must've been fake because it was actually a word - la rue , meaning the street. But so was Monvoisin , and no one ever went up to Coco and told her that, um, actually, that just meant my neighbour , so it couldn't possibly be your real name! It felt very odd to me. I would've liked to know why French, precisely, and it annoyed me that it felt so random.
I was a bit surprised about the inclusion of smut in this. Obviously, it wasn't the dirtiest, nastiest thing I've ever read, not by a mile, but it went further than just fade-to-black, and that threw me off, especially since Goodreads has this classified as YA. It didn't really bother me, but it did make me a tad bit uncomfortable. Though maybe that was just the fact that Mahurin made me read smut that included Reid freaking Diggory.
Overall, this was just a pain in the ass to read. Like I said, I didn't expect I'd love this book, but I also didn't expect it to be so horrible. It also read like a Wattpad story, for some inexplicable reason. (Have I ever read anything on Wattpad? No. But it gives me those vibes.)
Content Warnings
Graphic: Blood, Cursing, and Misogyny
Moderate: Sexual content