Gods & Monsters by Shelby Mahurin- BOOK REVIEW

*Contains spoilers for Serpent & Dove and Blood & Honey*

⭐️ 5 stars ⭐️

I have no idea how I’m going to be coherent in this review (because my mind is BLOWN) but I will try my best.

Before I begin, a huge thank you to HarperCollins India (@harpercollinsin) and @afterschooltales for the gifted copy of Gods & Monsters. I’m so grateful for this opportunity!

🕊🐍🖤

Gods & Monsters begins right where Blood & Honey left off, which was at a huge cliffhanger with everything going wrong (thanks Shelby for that, btw). We get thrown right into the thick of all the action! Nicholina has possessed Lou and nobody knows. Our crew is moving closer to Chateau Le Blanc while they’re still dealing with the grief of losing such an important part of their crew.

From the very first page, there’s action! And there’s so much of it throughout the book that you might need a couple of breathers in between to get down from the high of witnessing all the WOW-ing and emotional moments, fights scenes and the plot twists!!

Shelby has just knocked it out of the park with her writing style in this one. It was beautiful, easy to immerse yourself into but also emotional and multi- perspective with lush world building and new, complex characters. I shed quite a few tears on more than one occasion while reading, wanted to fling my book across the room multiple times and also tried to smother my laugh when I was with my family. I really have no idea how she managed to bring out all of my emotions without disturbing the balance or affecting the plot of the book.

There was a huge amount of world building in this book but it didn’t feel forced or like information dumping. The balance and pacing were so good that I HAD to keep turning the pages until I finished it! Infact, I think Gods & Monsters had the best pacing among all three books!

Usually, we’re introduced to all the major characters by the beginning of the third book in a trilogy but here, we were introduced to not only new, important characters (to love and hate) but also whole new CREATURES! Which was so unexpected! The new characters played very significant roles and not once did I feel that we didn’t have enough time with them to care about the consequences of their actions. I found myself equally attached to them!

I also loved the development in relationships of our original crew (and some unlikely new members). I absolutely adored seeing how they worked together, how their opinions differed yet they stuck with each other, the banters, the laughs, the emotional moments and also how they grew even closer together.

There were many intriguing side characters that surprised me with how much I loved them! The friendships I didn’t see coming also amazed me in the best possible way! A character I despised in the previous books became one of my favourites in this one (Can’t name who it was cause SPOILERS).

Our main characters, Reid and Lou were THE best together in this book!! I absolutely adored all their moments together! The romance has hot, there was sizzling chemistry, lots of emotions PLUS fun banters! It was just the PERFECT blend of everything I love! Another thing that made reading about this duo so enjoyable for me was how after the events of Blood & Honey (which in my opinion had great character development for these two both together and individually), they understood each other’s mind and beliefs better and that definitely strengthened their love and feelings for each other and IT SHOWED!!

I really, really loved Beau even more than I did before! Without giving any spoilers, I would just like to say, he was probably my favourite character to read about in this book!

Nothing new, I ADORED Coco as much as I did in the previous books!

Honestly speaking, Morgane was not my favourite villain. But me not being impressed with her didn’t reduce the enjoyability factor at all. There were so many other problems and challenges that our gang was facing that Morgane didn’t matter much.

A character that I would really like to specifically mention is Nicholina. She was so creepy and disturbing yet I found her POV really fascinating. I also loved the fact that we got her backstory! Maybe she was morally grey or maybe totally evil but whatever she was, her character was definitely one of my favourites to read about!

The way the loss of a loved one and separation was discussed in this book was so good! I loved seeing how everyone was struggling and coping in different ways, how they hadn’t let go but we got to see their progress and healing.

Since this is the conclusion of the trilogy, the stakes were very high and the book was intense at many times and yet it was also so much fun to read because of the quick reprieves we got in the form of witty banters and fun sub- plots!

I’m pretty sure I’m missing some point or the other (because there was so much happening and I have MANY thoughts containing Spoilers) but I would wrap up this review by saying, PLEASE READ GODS & MONSTERS ASAP! It’s the most perfect conclusion to a series I’ve read in a very long while. I seriously cannot find even a single thing I didn’t like about this book. It made me laugh and cry, kept me on the edge of my seat with all the action, had me guessing what would come next, gave me a proper balance between everything I love in a Fantasy book and more! Lou and Reid’s story has been wrapped up so satisfactorily, I can’t help loving it! ♥️

P. S. If you’re looking for some merch for Serpent & Dove, check out my Lou and Reid magnetic bookmarks here and Lou art print here. There are more products coming soon because I’m now obsessed! 😍