Denise's Reviews > Serpent & Dove

Rating: 1.5 Stars

Before I begin I'd like to start us off with some quotes:
"Didn’t all men share some sort of unspoken camaraderie? A mutual understanding of their own collective importance?"
"From the dawn of time, this has been men’s plight – to be tempted by women." - Mean Witch-hunter #47
Does this dialogue make you go haha yeah #feminism, or does it make you cringe in a little ball? Well you're in for this type of writing and much more!

Serpent and Dove has been marketed as a clash between witch and witch-hunter, the revolutionary new fantasy romance novel. What you actually get is 90% romance with poor world-building and very little witch/witch-hunting action. I can totally understand if you just want a guilty pleasure book that has a hate-to-love (and by love I mean forever and always and eternal and our souls are bound as one) romance, but if you are expecting anything more you will be disappointed.

Since I opened this review with some quotes, let me explain my issues with them and with the style of writing in general.
1) Nuance? Never heard of her. If you're looking for any sort of nuance in this book you can check your expectations at the door because you won't find it here. There are many heavy-handed quotes that prevent any real insight or examination into the characters or society as a whole. You might hope that the author would use the premise of two people with drastically different philosophies on life to explore why people get indoctrinated into cult-like groups and how people might struggle with their faith when faced with atrocities but ..... nope.
2) Anachronisms Now you could argue that anachronism isn't something that even applies to fantasy novels. These phrases didn't exist in historically accurate magical witch colonies! isn't a strong argument in-and-of itself. But Lou's diction sounds like you took an edgy modern teenager and dropped her into this story. The author is clearly using a backdrop that resembles France anywhere from the 14th century to the 18th century, and includes the patriarchal and religious baggage that comes with such an era. The reader is supposed to believe that Lou was raised in such a society, but her dialogue is so dissonant with the world she resides in that it is very difficult to get any sense of realism. It's one of the reasons the world-building is so poor: the characters (especially Lou) and the society are completely at odds. I don't expect the characters to speak with historically accurate phrases, but the dialogue is so uncompromisingly modern that I wouldn't have been surprised if she started using hashtags. Which leads me to...
3) #Woke Now look, obviously I'm all for strong feminist characters; it's one of the main selling points for YA fiction. But I dislike the use of heavy-handed crowd-pleasing quotes that proclaim a feminist message in place of well-crafted characters and stories that show this message. Good stories don't need to tell you that they're progressive. Often books that use #woke quotes actually contradict their message with poor characters which is what happens here! But more on that later.

Now I have one more more thing to say about the writing style. In addition to cringey quotes there are also just badly worded sentences.

"Our respect had once been mutual. But that was before the envy."

"There were worse kinds of smoke than chimney."

There were worse kinds of smoke than chimney.

There were worse kinds of smoke than chimney.

How did anyone think that this is good sentence structure??? It's clunky, awkward, and just plain uncomfortable to read. I think any English teacher would underline this in a heartbeat with a note that just said syntax! Honestly this would make my top 10 worst literary quotes of 2019 if I had such a list. Perhaps I should make such a list.

Let's move onto the plot. Like I said before there is very little witch action. It will trick you at the beginning into thinking there will be a lot of interesting magic, but that doesn't last long. The majority of the time you will be quite literally stuck in a room with our protagonists. There is some interesting action at the end, but the poor world-building means the reader never feels that this conflict has much weight. The only world-building you get is from a few info-dumps sprinkled throughout the book and you barely get to see this magical world integrated into the setting or the plot. And for some reason they edited the Goodreads book description so that it now spoils most of the plot points that hold any interest? Why would you do this? I have screenshots! The previous description was much better, but I digress. So let's take a look at main subject of this book: romance.

If sappy romance is all that you're looking for I'm sure you will be fairly satisfied. But I would warn other readers that these two people go from hating each other to this:
"I loved him. Deeply. Such a love was not something of just the heart and mind. It wasn’t something to be felt and eventually forgotten, to be touched without it in return touching you. No . . . this love was something else. Something irrevocable. It was something of the soul."
in the span of this short novel. Yes, it is that overly-dramatic and it doesn't follow any realistic progression. Firstly, Reid doesn't undergo any type of character arc in which he learns to accepts witches. Of course for the majority of the novel Reid doesn't know that Lou is a witch, but he is aware that she sympathizes with them. So there should have been some type of progression/self-doubt but it is barely explored! Minor spoiler: in the SECOND HALF of the novel Reid captures and burns a witch alive.... and he feels nothing! There is no internal conflict about morality; not even a hint of self-doubt. He only feels bad that Lou is upset but at no point in the novel does he ever explore his feelings about this event, and I'll remind you that he is a viewpoint character. He just burns someone alive ..... and then we move on. The author never takes advantage of situations like these to further the growth of a character. A character can't go from burning a witch to fulling loving one in the last half of a novel! They could have saved this full acceptance for a future novel because in the context of Reid's character arc - or lack thereof - it falls flat.

Secondly, many aspects of the romance contradict the self-proclaimed feminist message. Lou seems to enjoy that Reid acts possessive/jealous once they are married even though she doesn't like him. As Lou's feelings grow she refers to his ex-love interest Celie as a "cow" multiple times though she knows nothing about her - I thought we were past this as a society. Lastly and most importantly (Minor Spoiler) when Lou discovers Reid is still a virgin even though he had a relationship with Celie she has this thought:

"How could Celie have abandoned him in this? What else was first love good for but bumbling hands and breathless discovery? At least she’d taught him to kiss properly. I supposed I should be grateful for that."

Just let that sink in. I could write a dissertation on the problems with that statement. Stay tuned for my 100-page essay! But let me at least say this to any young girl who is reading this review: You have absolutely no obligation or responsibility to be physically intimate with your significant other. It is a very personal decision that should be made in your own time and if anyone ever tries to manipulate you into doing something you are not ready for, drop them! You deserve better. It is your choice and don't ever feel any sort of obligation to do more than you feel comfortable doing. This quote sends such a dangerous, toxic message in a novel aimed at teenagers that it honestly disgusts me. Not to mention that in this era any girl would have been socially ostracized if not physically abused had she become pregnant while she was unmarried so Celie's actions are even more understandable (do you see what I mean about the disconnect between character and society?). And this is why I have so many problems with the #woke language of this novel since its underlying sexist tones completely undercut its feminist message.

In conclusion, I feel that this novel has many problems. It doesn't deliver on world-building or fantasy adventure, and the romance is over-dramatic and at times problematic. I'm not here to criticize anyone who found enjoyment in this novel, but I hope I have made potential readers aware of type of book they will be reading. It may seem that I am holding YA literature to an overly high standard but it is only because I have a lot of respect for the genre and I know that many great books have and will continue to grow from it. This is not one of them.

Thanks to Edelweiss for the ARC.

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