SERPENT & DOVE by SHELBY MAHURIN
A REVIEW by ALEXA DUNCAN
I’ve seen Serpent & Dove floating around in my bookish circles for the longest time. Since its publication in 2019, this book has been around EVERYWHERE. And I mean everywhere. It’s supposed to be YA’s Next Big Thing, so I knew I had to purchase it for the library whether I wanted to or not. So, when we finally got the book on our shelves, I knew I had to read it. I was excited, even, about its premise. Witches! Fantasy France! Witch hunters! Fake marriage?
But…did Serpent & Dove live up to my expectations? It’s hard to say.
Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin is the first book in a major YA fantasy series set in a fictionalized, fantasy version of France. I think. It’s hard telling because certain world building aspects are not this book’s strong suit. Nevertheless, we follow two points of view: That of Louise LeBlanc, a witch, and Reid Diggory, a witch hunter. After an incident involving a curtain at a play, Louise (often called Lou) and Reid are suddenly married, and our plot kicks off from there.
If this very brief plot summary sounds a lot like a Harlequin romance novel, then congratulations! You’re correct! It does sound like a romance novel–and while this isn’t a bad thing by any stretch–it also means this book doesn’t sound very…YA. Not to me, anyway. And that is where my problem with Srepent & Dove lies. It’s not necessarily a bad book. Lou is a fun character and the writing is fine, but it doesn’t read like a young adult novel to me, nor does this book tackle many of the typical “teen” problems that make YA such a joy to read.
Serpent & Dove also happens to be at the core of a discussion I see a lot in my bookish circles. Is YA getting to be…too adult? It’s a valid question, and one I can’t tell you the answer to. Books like Serpent are becoming more and more popular in YA these days. Is that a good thing? Depends on your perspective. I should warn you, as a librarian, that Serpent & Dove is far more mature than what you’d see in a YA book published five years ago. It has cursing and drinking and one explicit sex scene. Some teens can handle that sort of thing, and that’s valid. Some teens can’t. Also valid. It’s a matter of choosing what you can handle and what you can’t.
As I mentioned before Serpent isn’t a bad book. I was entertained throughout most of it, but I feel it could have been at least 100 pages shorter and the plot wouldn’t have been sacrificed. It’s quite the tome, clocking in at over 500 pages. Debuts are getting longer and longer these days, and while this isn’t the norm, it’s certainly something to consider when deciding to pick this one up or not.
For all my griping, I enjoyed Serpent’s magic system. It’s unique and involves a lot of give and take. No one can perform magic without having to give something of themselves in return. It’s a neat mechanic.
Overall, I didn’t hate this book. I didn’t necessarily love it, either.
If you want to give it a go, you can check out Serpent & Dove at the Argenta library today!