Serpent & Dove – Shelby Mahurin (review)

Title: Serpent & Dove.

Author: Shelby Mahurin.

Format: Hardcover from library.

Publisher:  HarperTeen.

Page count: 513.

Release day: September 3^rd 2019.

Genre: YA, fantasy.

Rating: 2 stars.

What is it about? (Summary from GoodReads)

Bound as one to love, honor, or burn.

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

Sworn to the Church as a Chasseur, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. His path was never meant to cross with Lou’s, but a wicked stunt forces them into an impossible union—holy matrimony.

The war between witches and Church is an ancient one, and Lou’s most dangerous enemies bring a fate worse than fire. Unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, a choice must be made.

And love makes fools of us all. 

My thoughts:

I’m so sad to say that I was just bored while reading this.. I really wanted to love this book, since it sounded so good, but for me it just didn’t work..

It was so predictable, I think I guessed almost all plot twists, except one, and I didn’t really care for that twist. Probably because it was all the way at the end, and by that time I was not really caring anymore.

This book promises a marriage between a witch and a witch hunter, where I would expect a lot of banter and sass. The marriage was definitely there, but I just did not understand why, I wanted some kind of explanation. We got it, all the way at the end, but that was way too late for me. The relation between these married characters was so weird, it moved in all directions, without clear reasoning. Besides their relation, I also didn’t really care for the individual characters, again because there was not much explanation. There is lots implied about their pasts, which made me curious, but those pasts were only told at the end of the book. The only character I really liked was Coco!

I honestly think nothing happened for the first 300 pages, the only thing that made me continue reading were these implications about their pasts, and I wanted to know. Which is also the main reason why I gave this book 2 stars instead of 1, since she did keep my interest in some way! I feel like if the action was more spread out throughout the book I would have enjoyed it way more!

Honestly I feel like I should have DNF’ed this book.. I think it is clear that I won’t be continuing in this series.

Have you read this book? What did you think?