Serpent & Dove

By: Shelby Mahurin

Narrated by: Holter Graham, Saskia Maarleveld

An Amazon Best Book of 2019 * New York Times Bestseller * B&N's YA Book Club Pick * Indiebound Bestseller * #6 on the 2019 Kids’ Indie Next List

""A brilliant debut, full of everything I love: a sparkling and fully realized heroine, an intricate and deadly system of magic, and a searing romance that kept me reading long into the night. Serpent & Dove is an absolute gem of a book."" —Sarah J. Maas, #1 New York Times bestselling author of A Court of Thorns and Roses series

Bound as one, to love, honor, or burn. Book one of a stunning fantasy duology, this tale of witchcraft and forbidden love is perfect for fans of Kendare Blake and Sara Holland.

Two years ago, Louise le Blanc fled her coven and took shelter in the city of Cesarine, forsaking all magic and living off whatever she could steal. There, witches like Lou are hunted. They are feared. And they are burned.

As a huntsman of the Church, Reid Diggory has lived his life by one principle: Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live. But when Lou pulls a wicked stunt, the two are forced into an impossible situation—marriage.

Lou, unable to ignore her growing feelings, yet powerless to change what she is, must make a choice. And love makes fools of us all.

Don't miss Gods & Monsters, the spellbinding conclusion of this epic trilogy, coming July 2021!

Amazing PNR arranged marriage with witches story

This story dragged me in, it's an enemies to lovers, marriage of convenience PNR with brilliant world-building, characters I love, and a storyline that will keep you seated until you are done reading. Lou is a strong female character, yet vulnerable inside with her emotions, then we get a strong hero on the outside yet so immature in other ways that makes him intriguing, having both POV has made this story more interesting, deepening the insight of what is going on around, and why they are behaving the way they are. It took me a long time to get to it as my reviewing schedule didn't allow me to get to it as an ARC, but now I finally did and the audiobook was phenomenal. I love Saskia Maarleveld and Holter Graham, Saskia is one of my favorite narrators for this genre and she did a terrific job, while I didn't know Holter as much before this one and he stole my heart bringing Reid voice to life.

Great Story! Marred by Horrible Male Narrator.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book except for Holter Graham. Please replace him for the next book.

The story was fun, if not a little predictable. I loved the setting and world building. I thought the concept of two narrators was good, but poorly executed. Graham's horrible performance is what lowered my overall rating of the book. Audible should really have an option to evaluate each narrator if there are multiples.

Graham's performance is monotonous even though he tries desperately to give each character different voices. It's not just with his inability to create different voices, but also his complete disregard for punctuation. His cadence is choppy and inconsistent at best, where he should pause, he rushes and where he should speed up, he takes awkward breaks. I'm not sure if this is his fault or if the director told him to perform like he was just learning how to read. His worst character by far was Reid. With Reid, Graham attempts to lower his voice to make Reid sound more masculine, but it just ends up sounding like little kids emulating their father's voice.

I can't wait for the second book! hopefully the male narrator will be replaced, if not I'll have to the book because I will not subjugate myself to this type of performance again.

enjoyed but he made it tough to get through

it was a great book but the male narrator was awful hard to listen to his narration was annoying and his voices were as well.

LOVE this story. Couldn’t stand the voice actor.

I love this story and wanted to listen to it rather than do a re-read at this time since the second book comes out next week. The story is just as great and I usually love when they do both male and female actors for the different viewpoints, but the voice actors didn’t work well together. They pronounced words differently which was super distracting and the male voice actor’s voice in general just made me cringe. I don’t mean to be so disrespectful, but his voice and acting irked the heck out of me. I probably won’t be listening to this a second time so I’m really grateful I only got this for $6.99. The female voice actress was much better though, which got me through the whole book, but I much prefer to read from now on. I love this story so much and have preordered three different copies of the next book. I’ll be RE-READING this story again and again!

Loved

This was one of my favorite reads this year. I enjoyed the addition of magic and unique elements to a familiar world. There is a bit of a modern touch mixed in with the fantasy to create a unique feel to the story. I can't wait to listen to book 2!