Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin (book review)


Dear Reader, 
I received a beautiful hardback copy of this book for my birthday back at the start of the year and it has taken me a few months to get to it. The plot for the book sounded promising and the book had received a lot of hype and recognition for the bookstagram communities. Were all my expectations met? Read on and see I suppose...

The start of this book felt really rushed to me. I thought the characters that we met because Reid, the guys were not given enough screen time and whenever they were brought up again throughout the book I was confused as to whom we were speaking of. I thought that the way the two were arranged to get married was a bit of poor plot choice. It just felt so forced and rushed. I think there could have been better ways for that to all plot out and that wasn't one of them. 

I thought the end scene in the book was my favourite- where the battle in the Witches layer took place and the high priest was stabbed, I'm still a little confused as to why he was there, was he with the Chasseurs? I think I may have missed something in that bit. I really liked Coco and Ansel's characters. I'll always have a sweet spot for Ansel in my heart. 
Another of my favourite scenes was the bit where the witches put of the show in town where they explained the scandal with the high priest and the witch. I could really picture that scene in my head, like something out of Sabrina on Netflix. I thought that scene was amazing because of the flow of it and the pacing was excellent. 

This sounds really strange but I think one of the most well-written scenes was the most scandalous one between Lou and Reid, yoooou know what I meannn. Reid was supposed to be inexperienced- didn't sound too inexperienced to me! Haha. 
The funniest scene was definitely the bit where Pan the baker (are you kidding me with that name) was having a go at Reid, I'm pretty sure he was literally beating him with baguette. That made me laugh a lot, especially of the audiobook. 
In my opinion, the most touching bit of this book was when Reid started to except that the enemy wasn't what he'd been taught and that self-conflict that he was feeling was really lovely to read about because you knew he was doing all of it, having all these battles with his conscience and betraying his brotherhood for Lou. Also watching him being really protective over her from the beginning was very sweet. 

A thing I wish I saw more of in this book was some of France- if it's set in France, show me France! One of this books biggest selling points for me was that it was set in France and I wish I saw more of the country and more of the scenery, it definitely would have created more of an atmosphere for the book. One thing I wish I saw less of was that stupid fudging song. Big tity litty or whatever her name is. If we could extract all the bits in the plot where that song is used and from them into a snake pit far far away, I would have definitely given the book another star. 
It was funny the first time Shelby, know when to stop. 


Will I be reading blood and honey? To be honest, probably not. I'll see what the reviews say and if you guys read it and really want me too then I will. 
I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a cool fantasy concept (with not the very best execution) and a steamy haters to lovers romance.
I would give this book about 3.7/5. 

Until next time, 
Issy 
x

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