Serpent & Dove

What's inside (8 sections)

1. A witch hiding in Cesarine
2. Forced into a marriage neither wants
3. Living with the hunter
4. Magic comes with a bill
5. Old enemies close in
6. What works and what drags
7. Key takeaways
8. FAQ

I came to this one sideways. A coworker kept leaving romantasy paperbacks in the break room, and this black cover with the gold snake kept showing up on top of the pile. I finally took it home on a Friday because I wanted something plotty and French feeling that did not ask me to memorize forty place names first. Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin fit that mood. It was first published in 2019 by HarperTeen, the opening book in the Serpent & Dove series, and the hardcover edition cited here runs 528 pages. I read it across a weekend, mostly on the couch with coffee going cold, and I finished it faster than I expected.

The hook is simple enough to explain to a friend. Louise le Blanc, called Lou, is a witch hiding in plain sight. Reid Diggory is a witch hunter who believes witches should burn. They end up married. Neither wants it. Both have good reasons to keep secrets. What follows is part hideout story, part domestic comedy, part slow burn romance, with a rough final third where old debts come due.

If you like enemies to lovers but get tired when the hate flips to love in one conversation, this one takes its time. That was the best surprise for me.

A witch hiding in Cesarine

Lou fled her coven at sixteen. The coven is the Dames Blanches, led by her mother Morgane, who is called La Dame des Sorcieres. Lou wanted out badly enough to walk away from magic itself. For two years she lives in Cesarine, the capital city of Belterra, stealing to eat and sleeping in a crumbling flat above the streets.

Cesarine feels like an old French port town pressed into fantasy. There are markets, bakeries, theatres, churches, narrow alleys where pickpockets work the crowds. There are also burnings. The Church runs the city with the help of the Chasseurs, young men trained to track and kill witches. When a witch is caught, the sentence is fire. People gather to watch. Lou has seen the smoke. She keeps her head down.

Her only real friend in the city is Coco. Coco works at a shop and keeps odd hours, and she knows what Lou is. Coco is a different kind of witch, tied to blood and quieter spells, and she helps Lou stay hidden. Their friendship felt true to me because it is practical more than sweet. They share food. They warn each other about patrols. They bicker about money. Lou steals a ring here, a purse there. Coco covers for her when she is late. It is not a grand sisterhood speech. It is two girls trying to pay rent without getting caught.

On the other side is Reid. He was raised by the Church after being left as a child, and he grew up inside its rules. Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live is not a slogan to him. It is the frame he puts around every choice. He trains hard. He prays. He follows his captain, the Archbishop, with total loyalty. He lives sparely, keeps his weapons clean, writes careful reports. He has friends among the other Chasseurs, especially Ansel, who is younger and softer hearted, and he trades jokes with men who have known him for years.

Mahurin sets up their worlds so you can see the collision coming. Lou needs a powerful ring to shield herself from being found by her mother. Reid needs to prove himself as a steady hunter. Cesarine keeps pushing them into the same squares and theatres and back streets.

One small thing I appreciated early on: Lou is not a perfect thief. She gets tired. She gets hungry and makes dumb choices. She shows off when she should stay quiet. That flaw is what starts the plot.

Forced into a marriage neither wants

The marriage starts as damage control. Lou tries to lift something she should have left alone, and the attempt goes wrong in public. To get out of trouble, she pulls a stunt that puts Reid in a compromising position in front of witnesses. It is reckless and a little cruel, and she knows it right away.

The Archbishop solves the scandal the way powerful churchmen solve scandals. He orders them to marry. For Reid, it saves his reputation as a clean and obedient servant of the Church. For Lou, it is either marry the hunter or face questions she cannot answer without burning.

So they marry. Fast. With almost no one happy about it.

The early married chapters were my favorite for pure entertainment. Lou moves into Reid's plain rooms with her knives and stolen goods and bad habits. Reid tries to set house rules about prayer times, meals, visitors, locks. Lou breaks most of them by accident, then on purpose, then by accident again.

There is a famous beat here that readers talk about a lot, and I will keep it plain. The marriage has to look real to outsiders. Lou is not ready to share a bed with a man who would kill her if he knew the truth. She fakes the proof of consummation with blood from her own arm. It is painful to read, not because it is graphic but because it shows how trapped she feels. She will hurt herself before she trusts him.

Reid, for his part, is awkward in a way I found likable. He has no idea how to live with a woman who talks back, eats with her hands when she is starving, swears at pigeons, and disappears at night. He tries to be decent. He buys bread. He fixes a shutter. He prays longer when he is confused, which is often. Ansel stops by and treats Lou with kindness when other Chasseurs stare. That kindness matters later.

Coco keeps visiting, which creates constant tension. Every visit risks Reid noticing something off. A smell of herbs. A mark. A word used wrong. Lou starts lying in layers. A small lie to Reid about where she was. A bigger lie to Coco about how safe she feels. A huge lie to herself about how long she can keep this up.

The book hurries past that to get to the domestic part. I let it go because that part is fun.

Living with the hunter

This middle stretch is long, and it lives or dies on whether you enjoy watching two stubborn people learn each other. I did, mostly.

Lou learns Reid's habits. He wakes early. He sharpens blades at the table. He reads scripture with a pencil in hand. He is polite to old women in the market and stiff with nobles. He is brave in a fight and shy at a theatre party. He has a code, and he follows it even when it costs him sleep.

Reid learns Lou's habits. She hums while she mends. She hates being locked in. She loves sweets and steals bites off his plate. She pretends not to care about people, then stays up all night when Ansel is sick or Coco is late. She tells wild stories about her past that almost add up. Almost.

Madame Labelle's theatre gives them a place outside the small flat. Lou loves the noise and paint and costumes. Reid hates standing out in a crowd. Coco moves through backstage easily. Ansel watches plays with wide eyes.

The romance builds in small touches rather than big speeches. A hand on a back in a crowd to keep her close. Mending a coat. Sharing a cloak in rain. Teaching each other card games. Reid starts to bend rules he once held firm. He looks away when Lou slips out. He asks fewer questions. Lou starts to feel guilty in a new way, not only fear of being caught but shame about lying to someone who is trying to be good to her.

There is a kiss that happens in a bad place, near death and blood, after a close call on patrol. It is messy and badly timed. Common Sense Media flags it too, and they are right that it can unsettle. It fit these two, though. They do not meet cute. They meet under stress and act on feelings they have not named yet.

The heat level rises as trust grows. This is marketed as young adult, and the publisher age band is fourteen and up, but some scenes are open and physical. Parents and younger teens should know that going in. It is not constant, and it is not there for shock alone. It marks the point where Lou stops planning to run and starts wanting to stay, which makes her secret heavier.

My gripe here is pacing. A few chapters circle the same fight. Lou hides something. Reid senses it. They argue. They make up. They share a meal. Then it repeats with a different object hidden or a different door locked. I skimmed a little around the two hundred page mark. Then Coco pushes Lou to take her safety seriously, Ansel asks an innocent question that lands hard, and the story sharpens again.

Magic comes with a bill

Mahurin keeps the magic rules loose at first, then fills them in. That vagueness annoyed some early reviewers, and I get it. You hear about white witches and blood witches, about patterns and offerings, about words that shape results, but you do not get a textbook chapter. You learn by watching Lou decide what she is willing to pay.

The core idea is simple. Magic is not free. Stronger workings ask for more. Blood is one currency. Breath and pain and memory can be others. Witches who follow Morgane are willing to pay with other people's lives. Lou and Coco try to pay only from themselves, and even that scares them.

Lou has sworn off magic to stay hidden. Every time she breaks that vow, she leaves a trace her mother or the Church could follow. So she tries street tricks first. Talk her way out. Run. Hide. When that fails, she uses small spells. A lock eased open. A scent covered. A wound closed quickly before Reid sees. Each one helps in the moment and adds risk after.

Coco's magic is earthier. She works with herbs and blood and close contact. She can heal, after a fashion, but it costs her. She keeps tallies in her head that she does not always share. I liked that the book shows her limits. She cannot fix everything. She says no when Lou asks for too much. That no felt important.

Reid's view of magic starts to crack here. He was taught that witches are evil by nature and fire is the cure. Living with Lou shows him a person who lies but also feeds stray dogs and sits with Ansel when he has nightmares. He sees healing used to help, not harm. He does not change his mind all at once. He finds reasons to look away. A missing patrol report. A question he does not ask Madame Labelle. A blind eye at the theatre when Coco slips out the back.

Morgane stays mostly off page in this stretch, which makes her scarier. Lou dreams about her. Coco hears rumors of Dames Blanches moving near the city. A captured witch says things under questioning that do not match Church teaching. Reid starts to notice gaps between what he was told about witches and what he sees in burn records. Ansel, bless him, asks plain questions that better trained men avoid.

If I recall right, one detail that stuck with me was how Lou counts her uses. She tries to keep track the way you might count coins, telling herself this is the last one. Then a friend is hurt and she spends again. It is a small habit and it tells you she knows the debt is growing.

Old enemies close in

The last third moves fast and gets bloody. Lou's past stops knocking and kicks the door.

Morgane wants Lou for a working that needs her own bloodline. Without giving away each turn, the plan involves ending one line to end another, with Lou as the price. That is why Lou ran at sixteen. It was not teenage rebellion. It was refusal to be used as a sacrifice. Her mother does not forgive refusal.

The Church tightens at the same time. The Archbishop, who arranged the marriage, has his own secrets and his own claim on Lou. King Auguste's court circles closer too. Reid learns things about his birth that shake the story he told about himself. I will not lay out every reveal because part of the pull is watching Reid piece it together. The short version that matters for this book: Reid is more tied to crown and church than he knew, and less free than he believed.

Lou is forced to use bigger magic in front of people she wanted to protect. There is a fight at the theatre circle and later a hunt through streets and woods where witches and Chasseurs hit each other head on. People die. Ansel is in danger. Coco is pushed past what she can safely give. Reid has to choose in real time between orders and what he sees with his own eyes.

The choice lands because Mahurin spent three hundred pages building it. Reid has seen Lou risk herself for others. He has seen Chasseurs lie. He has seen records altered. When he finally turns, it is not a speech about tolerance. It is a man refusing to raise his blade against his wife and her friends while true killers stand beside him giving orders. I found that more believable than a grand conversion.

Lou changes too. She stops trying to pay for everything alone. She asks Coco for help and accepts the cost. She tells Reid the truth in pieces, then all at once when there is no room left for pieces. She stands with the Dames Blanches defectors and blood witches she once avoided, not because she trusts all witches now but because she trusts these people.

The final confrontation with Morgane is rough and costly. No one walks out clean. The book does not pretend a wedding fixes a war. It ends with love intact but safety gone. Lou, Reid, Coco, and Ansel are marked by coven, kingdom, and church alike. The sequel Blood and Honey picks up on the run, which the author site confirms as book two, followed by Gods and Monsters as book three.

I will say the twist about parentage and royal blood felt a bit piled on. One reveal would have carried the ending. We get two or three stacked in quick chapters. Readers who love lore may enjoy the pileup. I felt the air go out for a few pages while names and ties were sorted. Then a death I did not expect snapped me back, and the last fifty pages moved.

What works and what drags

What works first is voice. Lou narrates much of the book with a sharp tongue and a habit of deflecting with jokes. Reid gets his own chapters, drier and more formal, which gives you relief from Lou's patter. The banter between them made me laugh out loud twice. Once over burnt food. Once over a cloak that Lou insists on wearing wrong. Small stuff. It humanizes a big plot.

Coco and Ansel steal scenes without taking over. Coco is blunt and tired, loyal in a quiet way. Ansel is kind in a system that rewards hardness. Their friendship with the leads gives the romance room to breathe. Madame Labelle adds glamour and a safe stage where secrets can be traded as gossip.

The French flavor helps too. Names, food, clothes, saints, songs. It never feels like a history lesson. It feels like a city where people eat and pray and gossip and burn witches on feast days, which is a grim mix the book does not soften.

What drags, for me:

The opening magic rules are thin. If you need hard systems with clear costs from page one, you may fidget. I wanted one plain conversation early where Coco tells Reid, or Lou tells us, what white magic can and cannot do. It comes, but late.

The middle repeats its argument loop. Hide, suspect, fight, forgive. The book is 528 pages in hardcover, and about forty of those pages in the middle could have been cut or given to Morgane and the court. I kept reading because I liked the people, but I noticed the loop.

The age label is tricky. Fourteen and up fits the reading level and the themes of choice and faith, but the open door scenes and the violence push it older in practice. Fifteen or sixteen feels more right to me, and squeamish readers should start with a library copy.

Who should pick it up? Readers who want slow burn hate to love with witches and hunters, found family with teeth, and a heroine who talks too much when she is scared. Readers who want clean worldbuilding or low violence should skip it. There are burnings, blood prices, torture talk, and a hard ending.

I closed it thinking about Reid more than Lou, which surprised me. Lou shines early. Reid grows more. He starts as a rule book and ends as a man who chooses people over orders while still believing in something. That shift felt earned because we watched him wash dishes and stand guard and pray and fail and try again.

If you read it, tell me where you landed on the Archbishop. I changed my mind twice before the end. And save room for book two.

FAQ

Is Serpent & Dove the first book in a series?

Yes, it is book 1 in the Serpent & Dove trilogy. HarperTeen published it in 2019, followed by Blood & Honey and Gods & Monsters.

Who are Lou and Reid?

Lou is a runaway Dame Blanche witch hiding in Cesarine. Reid is a Chasseur, a Church trained witch hunter who is ordered to marry her.

Is Serpent & Dove appropriate for younger teens?

The publisher lists ages 14 and up, but open door romance scenes plus burnings and blood magic make it better suited to older teens.