Serpent & Dove: The Best YA Romance I've Read This Year?

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I recently did a buddy read of Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin with my friend Bethany, from the YouTube channel Beautifully Bookish Bethany!

 Both of us are fans of fantasy, and both of us are fans of Sarah J. Maas (although she prefers Throne of Glass and I'm an ACOTAR girl), and as this book is being pitched as a "steamy fantasy perfect for Sarah J. Maas" this seemed like a perfect fit for us.

 Boy oh boy was that an understatement! We both absolutely LOVED this book, and it will definitely appear on our list of favorite books of the year!

 Serpent & Dove takes place in a French-inspired fantasy world, where there are witches and witch hunters, called chasseurs, who are basically respected soldiers from the church. We follow Louise "Lou" who is a witch, and Reid, who is the captain of the chasseurs, who are forced into a marriage. And you can guess what comes next. ;)

 This book has everything going for it: it's diverse, it's super fast paced (Bethany and I finished it much earlier than we had expected to) despite being over 500 pages, it's steamy with an AMAZING romance (definitely the best part of the book), it's hilarious, it has twists you don't see coming, and it takes a look at feminism and religion in a really interesting and compelling way.

 I literally don't have a single complaint about this book! Reading it was just such an enjoyable experience!

 Now, let's talk about my favorite elements of the novel.

 First, the main characters, mainly Lou. Lou is such an awesome, badass character. She is beautiful, but bold, funny, but feral. Actually, she's absolutely hilarious. The way she stuns the men around her with her sexual jokes and crass language is hysterical. There's one scene where Lou is singing a super dirty bar song called "Big Tiddy Liddy," so that they'll give her whatever she wants just to make her stop singing had me in stitches.

 Now, the romance. Easily the best YA romance I've read this year! It's such a sexy, slow burn. I mean, who doesn't like a good hate to love? Lou and Reid's romance was so great, and it definitely made the book more of a fantasy romance rather than a fantasy. It was also a nice touch that it was the hero, not the heroine, who is a virgin, and that it was the heroine who is showing the hero the ropes. And yes, this book is steamy. There is one sex scene that is slightly graphic and would perhaps be considered a bit "steamy" for YA, but it is nowhere near as steamy as, say, ACOMAF. Just so you know.

 The world and the subjects that this book dealt with are also incredibly fascinating. There are the witches, all women, who, generally speaking, are not very good people, and then there's the Church/the chasseurs, entirely run by men, whose mission is to hunt down witches and burn them at the stake. The witches see men only as a tool for procreation, and the Church see women only as property. It's a really interesting battle between an extreme matriarchal society, and an extreme patriarchal society.

 And then there are the twists. I didn't see any of the twists coming, and they just kept popping up! I am SO EXCITED for book 2, but I am incredibly grateful to Shelby Mahurin for not ending the book on a cliffhanger. :)

 This book was incredible, I will definitely be rereading it sometime in the near future, and it comes out this TUESDAY, so head over to your local independent bookstore to pick up a copy!
XOXO,
Isabella

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