Serpent & Dove

Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin

That was disappointing. 

The premise: Lou is a witch and Reid is a witch hunter (initial reaction: ooh this is going to be fun). Lou gets beat up in the beginning (she has a lot of enemies) and then finds herself at the theater that Reid luckily happens to also be at. In her attempt to get away from Reid, who is hunting her for being affiliated with witches, she accuses him of sexual assault (nope, not going well). Then the Archbishop (Reid's boss basically) has the grand idea of marrying the two of them because women don't have any rights, therefore with Lou being Reid's wife, he has every right to harm her. Umm.......... WHAT?! And before this whole "marriage" idea popped up, the public was pissed because a man was accused of assaulting a woman. But now, since they're "married" it's all good and public is pretty much like, "Well, I guess there was no problem here then," and they go about their daily lives. And instead of just pretending that they were married, they go out of their way to perform a private ceremony. What does that even accomplish?? It's not like the public was demanding the official marriage papers. The whole book is a "love" story between an annoying, bad-problem-solving witch and her very sexist witch hunter husband.

Do not listen to anyone who says that these two characters are like Nina and Matthias from Six of Crows. THEY ARE LYING! Aside from the fact that Nina and Matthias had more development in their 50 pages of flashback than these characters did in 500 pages, Reid, who supposedly is compared to Matthias, never actually comes faces the fact that he's a sexist, bigoted a-hole. Lou, who is compared to Nina, is the most annoying, incomprehensible person on the planet. She constantly throws witches under the bus (even though she, herself, is a witch), and never even tries to help them. She hates the church because they keep on killing witches and I'm like HONEY, YOU'RE HELPING THE CHURCH! She is also a master at girl-hate. I freaking hate it when there is a girl in the story and they are immediately hated on by the main character for being too "lady-like." 

Some other issues: 

-there is a singular black main character whose name is Coco. 

-This line is in the book: "Witches give birth to other witches, therefore they're asexual." 

-The baker's name is Pan (which means bread in French. really creative thinking if you ask me) and he's constantly described as being "chubby" and "waddling around." 

-Witches with darker skin are constantly referred to as "the Mahogany Witch," while witches with fair skin are referred to as "the Beautiful, Pale Witch." 

-There is a LOT of girl hate for a book that is supposedly really #feminist. 

-Lou (18) hits on a 16-year-old to get what she wants. 

-Reid is an idiot. 

-I wanted to punch the random prince who shows up in the face for just existing. 

-This book is praised like no other with a 4.05 star rating on goodreads.

I got to 300 pages and thought about giving up but then I thought that since I'd made it that far I might as well continue. I was ready to celebrate when I finished.

Note: If you read this passively or for entertainment only then you'll probably be fine with it. Unfortunately, besides all the problems I listed, it was a basic BASIC young adult story (with not very good writing or development of plot) that I got annoyed and slightly bored which caused me to notice all of the other stupid things of the book. It also didn't help that this was the book I read right after reading The Poppy War (which is amazing).

Secret never before seen footage of me reading this book: