Reviews with content warning for Toxic relationship - Game of Gold

Reviews tagging 'Toxic relationship'

Game of Gold by Shelby Mahurin

9 reviews

bookcheshirecat's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense medium-paced

Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated

1.0

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beckyyreadss's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

I wanted to read this book because I had seen this book all over bookstagram and booktok and wanted to read more new authors this year. My first sort of thoughts is that I wanted more from this book, and I didn’t get it.

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 get 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. This is a young adult romance fantasy novel.

Okay, Ansel and Coco saved this book. I love Ansel. If he was the main character – this book would have been so much bloody better. Coco is a badass protective friend and I want her in my life. But that was about it that I liked. They saved the book. The storyline took me a while to get into as it was quite weak and I was hoping it was a bit of darker romance even with YA but it just barely felt like YA or NA and just felt . . . average. Reid really annoyed the crap out of me and as the main character he just wasn’t “OH MY GOD I WANT HIM TO SAVE ME!” It was just a bizarre and strange read. There wasn’t any slow burn either. It went from we hate each other to we would die for each other in the space of like three chapters.

I really struggled with this book and hopefully now I’m understanding the characters and the world, hopefully I will be able to enjoy the next book.

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rinku's review

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious reflective medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

When I started reading Serpent & Dove, I was convinced that I would give it two or even one star. The beginning was so cliché and ridiculous, the characters unlikable, and the world flat. This first impression changed while reading and towards the end, I started to enjoy this novel.

Other reviews mention this as well, but the set-up for the story is so ridiculous. The witch Lou and the witch hunter Reid are forced to married because of an absurd moment: Reid is trying to catch Lou after she stole something in a theatre. Of course, it comes to a fight, and they fall in front of the curtain and the whole theatre, half-naked. For Reid to restore his honour, he’s forced by the bishop to marry Lou, just how she’s forced to this if she wants to live. There were some other moments in the story that were just over the top like this.

Other things especially annoyed me, like this overdone twist that

Spoiler

certain characters are secretly related to each other. This is the case with Lou being the child of the witch queen(?) and the bishop and Reid being the child of Madame Labelle and the king. I really hate this kind of plot twist

. I was frustrated as well by this “characters get interrupted before they can tell important things”-cliché.

But like I’ve mentioned, the story gets way more interesting and dramatic towards the end, since the fantasy aspect starts to play a bigger role:

Spoiler

Lou’s mom is able to kidnap her daughter and wants to sacrifice her, leaving Reid and his friends with no other choice than saving her. The finale was so dramatic with Lou almost dying, Madame Labelle actually dying and the reveal that Reid can use magic as well

I furthermore had some problems with the world. Christianity plays a huge part in the world which is a bit weird considering that this is a high fantasy novel? Besides this, there was barely any world building that we get the name of the city that the story takes place only after the first half. I generally liked the French influences in the settings, but those are rarely described, just like the magic system.

The writing style was okay, I guess. It tried too much to be “adult” aka using many swear words and making sexual references all the time but in comparison, the humour is so juvenile. This is apparently often the case with these novels that are marketed as YA but are NA in reality – looking at you, From Blood and Ash. Capslock is also used for screaming which I never like.

Talking about sexual references, those are constantly only made between men and women. It was annoying how much alleged differences between men and women are emphasized and how they say about Lou that she “fights like a man” or that she has “a name of a man”. The story acts like it’s against patriarchy but stuff like this keeps the patriarchy alive. Of course, there are only male witch hunters as well.

It took me some time to get warm with the characters, even though they are quite vividly described. Lou annoyed me at the beginning, and I hated Reid, his anger issues and possessiveness towards Lou. Later, the characters changed positively changed, and I even started to like the shipping since the romance is written well, besides this cliché question-answer-thing to get to know each other. It’s funny how she doesn’t care what others think of her, but he does so a lot. What bothered me though was this implied crush of Coco on Ansel who’s still underage.

I’m really curious to read the next book in the Serpent & Dove series because from what I’ve seen, it’s supposedly worse than the first book.

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marinasslibrary's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional hopeful mysterious sad tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Enemies to lovers just never disappoints!
I am obsessed with fantasy that includes witches lately and Serpent & Dove surely did deliver.
I love the marriage out of convenience/ forced marriage trope because it mostly leads to close proximity and only one bed!
Many of my favorite tropes were present and so I already loved the book for that!
Regarding to the plot it was always keep exciting and mysterious and imo not predictable! That is one of my main icks with books but with this one I did not predict the ending the least!
Reid and Lou have a great chemistry from the beginning throughout their highs and lows.
I am really excited to read the next book :)
I highly recommend reading this if you like the same tropes as me!

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safety_pin's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

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knifewifestan's review against another edition

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adventurous dark sad tense medium-paced

Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No

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oceanw1's review against another edition

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medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.5

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folkofthebook's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional funny lighthearted mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

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athousandlives's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.5

When I read the blurb of Serpent & Dove, and the raving reviews on bookstagram, I thought: this could be a 5-stars book. I finally settled on 4,5, because overall I had a good time, but I didn't like it enough for it to reach the very select 5-stars club.

I was over the moon at the beginning of the "arranged marriage" trope. It was fun, the characters were perfect for an enemies-to-lovers trope, and those two tropes mixed together and sprinkled with witch lore, were the perfect recipe for something I would love.
And it worked, for a while: I watched Reid and Lou's feelings for each other grow, while they were both (okay, mostly Lou) questioning their beliefs, and I liked their character growth. Also the constant bickering was all I was living for.
But the ending was... meh. I don't really know why, but I wasn't very interested in what was gonna happen. I didn't feel like the stakes were that high, while really they were, but somehow I wasn't quite into it.

Spoilery part of the review : Maybe that's because Lou gave up at the end, while I would have loved more drama about the fact that if she dies, so does Reid.
Maybe because there were too much plot twists about our lovebirds's parentage. "Omg the Archbishop is Lou's father! AND Mme Labelle is Reid's mother! AND the king is his father!" Though all these new parameters made for interesting new dynamics between these characters, it felt like an escalating of reveals that was just too much. Because of that, I felt like anything could happen by the mean of another plot-twist, and maybe that's why the stakes didn't feel high at the end.
And then the ultimate plot-twist happened: Reid can do magic. For me, it was too much. Not only Reid, who has been raised to hate witches and kill them, discovers that his long-lost mum AND his one true love are witches BUT he also discovers he is a witch himself? While it's not even something known to exist in this world? Nah. I didn't enjoy it.
What I did enjoy was Reid's reaction to finding out Lou is a witch: how his first instinct is to defend her and let her use him as a weapon, then he rejects her without any tact because she lied and she's, you know, evil, and then he comes to understand that he loves her no matter what, and that maybe all witches aren't evil (thanks to Ansel, my babe <3 <3). I thought it flowed well and was a good character development.

One strength of the book was the characters. They are fleshed out, they interact well, they are funny and lovable, and I enjoyed meeting them.
Lou was a nice main character. She was hilarious, with her unapologetic cursing and her constant banter with Reid or Ansel. Her questionings about loyalty, right, and wrong were touching.
I would have loved to read much about Reid. He didn't have as many own-voice chapters as Lou, and I would have liked to be more in his head, to explore how Jean-Luc's behaviour made him feel like, how his relationship to the Archbishop evolved, etc.
Ansel was the best secondary character. I loved that while everybody treats him as a child because he's the youngest of the cast, he stood up to defend what he tought was right, even against people who impressed him or meant a lot to him. I didn't expect to like him so much when I first read about him, but he became one of my favs along the way.
And I can't wait to read more about Coco in Blood & Honey, the blood witches got me intrigued!

Also, one last thought about this book... The use of French was hilarious as a native speaker. Some expressions (mostly the curses) were meant to sound authentic but were subtlely off-key, and it was very funny. I don't really understand why so many French words were used. I supposed it was part of an aesthetic?

Overall, it was a nice book, I loved all the lore about witches, Dames blanches and Dames Rouges, and the characters, but the plot lacked something to reach that 5th star.

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