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Ready to curl up with an old friend?  We’ve loved spending a few days with Lou and Coco and we are excited to spend a few days with Veronica Speedwell in a few weeks too!  These cooky heroines are a joy and we hope you’ll spend some time with Veronica too and then join us to chat about her antics in book two of the Veronica Speedwell mysteries series, A Perilous Undertaking by Deanna Raybourn. Sign up here to join us on Friday, December 10th, 2021 at 7:30pm Central Time for Virtual Book Club!

We love a good theme here at Heart.Wants.Books. and in addition to a good theme we love a good follow up. What could be better than a theme with a follow up book?! Pretty much nuthin. Last year in September we discussed Shelby Mahurin’s debut novel Serpent and Dove with Virtual Book Club in preparation to bring you all the spoilers for that title in our review post for Blood and Honey, number two in the trilogy. That came in October for our inaugural Witchy Reads themed month. And here we are, a year later, bringing you the final installment in the trilogy, Gods and Monsters, about Lou and Reid and all their friends and framily…and I just want more. Yeah, you thought it was Nikki saying that didn’t you?! But, it’s NOT, it’s Ashley, and I am on board with Nikki’s usual assessment for this trilogy and I want it to be a series with more more more more more more! 

We introduced Shelby Mahurin to you in our Blood and Honey post, and in something that is probably pandemic related, her website hasn’t changed since then. It still states she’s written two books, not the three we obviously know she’s published, and it says nothing of the teaser she gave on Facebook a couple of weeks ago about the story she’s working on. It’s Greek mythology based (I drool), and when Nikki shared the update with me I guessed WRONGLY at first. I’m excited to get more info in early 2022 about her book featuring Greek monsters! We can assume she’s diligently working away on her family farm in Indiana with her menagerie of humans and animals in her historic house that I also drool over, you can find more photos of that on her Instagram, which is more updated about her books than her website.

Now, for my real opinions, I had a little bit of a struggle getting into Gods and Monsters. Did I forget what happened at the end of Blood and Honey? Yes, yes I did. Did I open the book and get about a chapter in when Nikki shared with me the gloriousness that is this recap video? Also yes, and I so appreciate this existing. THERE. ARE. SPOILERS. IN. THE. VIDEO. That’s the point. It helped us not need to re-read Blood and Honey for major plot happenings and exactly how we left our crew. Additionally, I struggled with some of the names and relationships to our ensemble cast with the peripheral characters we had met in Blood and Honey when they showed up again, seemingly randomly, in Gods and Monsters. There seemed to be a lack of solid context clues about them, even though I had slightly more than vague ideas of who was whom. (The struggle when you read the last book a year prior.) The pacing seemed off from the previous two books, there was much less character development and much more external trials and tribulations until some major thing goes down at about 50%, and then we see a shift to the inner life for a little bit. That’s when I really got into these characters again, and I’m sad it took me that long to truly settle in. 

You know we don’t like to give plot spoilers, but it’s important to know that the crew is still chasing Morgane, Lou’s mother, in order to save both the witches and the kingdom from utter ruin at her hands. They have collected friends and allies along their journey, and gather a few more weapons for their arsenal during their trek back to where everything began, the city of Cesarine. The epilogue was good, but I want more, especially the stories of Coco and Beau and what happens to Belleterre and Cesarine after the final action sequence. I’m giving Gods and Monsters a 4 star rating and unless Mahurin decides to give us more in the world of Belleterre, I will not be re-reading these titles. Though, I highly recommend them to anyone who is looking for a fantastical, snarky, witchy read in which to get lost.

~Ashley

I’m relieved to have company in wanting more this time.  While the epilogue was glorious, I’d love a good A Court of Frost and Starlight -esque epilogue letting us glimpse at the life after the drama settles, because let’s be real, Lou, Coco, Reid, and Beau are going to have drama still, just hopefully less intense drama, and more related to unfiltered snark.  

Dear readers, it’s hard to review the third book in a trilogy without spoilers, but I’m going to do my best to minimize.  In Serpent and Dove, Shelby Mahurin sets up a magical world based on feudal France, and it’s glorious.  It’s like the Catholics versus the Protestants only it’s the Church versus the occult.  In Gods and Monsters, we get to go a layer deeper in that world, and learn even more about the history of the witches, meet other people groups who are considered occult [but what Ashley would consider to be paranormal], and deep dive into our beloved characters’ past with them.  It’s a wild, dramatic, fun ride, and it’s almost everything I wanted it to be, however, I do genuinely believe it’s everything it should be.  What I wanted more of was Beau and Coco, but with Reid and Lou telling the story, that wasn’t happening, and that’s ok, but maybe they can lead in that novel-length epilogue that isn’t actually a thing outside of my head?  (But readers, if you see that fan-fiction pop up, please slide into our DMs because I needs it.)

Perhaps my favorite part of Gods and Monsters is the messages that come in the story, the underlying lessons the characters learn and exemplify about listening to your soul, pursuing what’s right and good, loving people through their struggles, and about grief, hope, and strength. My least favorite part, the spiders, always the spiders even though this is probably more New Adult than Young Adult (hear: there is language, violence, and a couple of steamy scenes). 

I’m delighted for Gods and Monsters to be my 100th book of 2021, and I give it 4 stars.  The action was solid, if a bit rushed, the drama was high, as expected, and the ending was pretty great actually.  The writing was gorgeous and snark-filled and I realized how much I’ve missed that in my life with the past few titles we’ve read (this isn’t a dig on them, they have just been more serious in tone, and thus less snarky, except maybe for Juniper).  I’m not sure I’ll reread this trilogy, but these characters are a delight, and I’ll be thinking about them and the ways they grew and developed for weeks (at least) to come.  I’ll definitely be following Mahurin for more lipstick inspiration, historic house images, and updates on her current mythology-inspired project.  

~Nikki

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