Serpent & Dove is another Libby find, while searching for a Fantasy romance. It’s…fine! This is a young adult book (and it shows) set in a world roughly equivalent to 17th century France. Our main character, Lou (short for Louise), is a witch. She has run away from her coven to the city, and is making her living as a thief. We gather that Lou is running away from something bad, and is more or less in hiding from the members of her coven.
She is also in hiding from the Chasseurs – basically the Inquisition. Chasseurs are the Church’s witch hunters, sort of paramilitary monks under the leadership of the Archbishop. They take that “thou shalt not suffer a witch to live” pretty seriously. So, of course, Lou has a run-in with the captain of the chasseurs, Reid. And, of course, their next meeting results in a compromising public misunderstanding and a shotgun marriage. Thus begins our enemies-to-lovers scenario, because, of course, if Reid knew that Lou was a witch, he’d be duty bound to kill her.
I really enjoyed the system of magic in this book. There are two kinds of witches, le dame blanc, and le dame rouge. The white witches are all about nature, energy, and balance. Lou can see patterns of connection and manipulate them. In order to break a lock, Lou has to break one of her fingers. There’s also a distinct smell that occurs when witches use their magic, which I don’t think I’ve come across before. The red witches, on the other hand, use blood to perform their magic, either their own, or from another person. As a consequence, red witches tend to be identifiable by their many scars.
What I didn’t enjoy so much about this book was the romance. Lou and Reid are thrown together, and I can certainly understand how proximity would start to breed familiarity, and even attraction. But we really don’t see these two spending enough time together or getting to know each other to the point where undying love seems plausible. Just not buying it.
Overall, interesting magic, and the plot moves enough to keep the attention. But for romance? Eh. I suggest looking elsewhere.