Serpent & Dove in Order (and the Scarlet Veil)

The premise does the heavy lifting: Lou is hiding from her own coven, Reid burns witches for the Church, and neither of them can walk away from the marriage without losing everything. It is enemies-to-lovers with an unusually high cost of discovery.

The Serpent & Dove trilogy in order

1. Serpent & Dove (2019) — The forced marriage, the concealment, and a slow-burn romance conducted entirely under threat. Alternating first-person narration between Lou and Reid, which is the series' best structural decision.
2. Blood & Honey (2020) — A road book. The cast expands, the pair are on the run, and the middle-instalment problems are real — this is the one readers argue about.
3. Gods & Monsters (2021) — The resolution, considerably darker than book one, and the completion of the original arc.

Three books, complete story. No novellas are confirmed in this series, whatever some lists suggest.

The Scarlet Veil duology comes after

Mahurin returned to the same world with The Scarlet Veil (2023) and The Shadow Bride (2025), following a different lead into vampire territory. Some catalogues group all five titles under one "Serpent & Dove universe" heading, which is why they turn up in reading orders as books four and five.

Functionally they are a sequel duology: same world, later events, new protagonist, and they proceed from things the trilogy resolves. Read the trilogy first. Starting with The Scarlet Veil is not fatal but it does spend its opening chapters referring to a history you have not read.

Should you push through Blood & Honey?

This is the standard question. Book two swaps the tight, claustrophobic setup of book one for a travelling ensemble, adds several new viewpoints, and slows the central relationship down at exactly the moment readers wanted it to accelerate. It is the least loved instalment by a wide margin.

The consensus among people who finished is that it pays off — several of the additions in book two are what make book three land. If you loved Serpent & Dove, treat the middle book as connective tissue rather than as a sequel of equal weight, and keep going.

A related warning about book three: Gods & Monsters adds several new narrating voices, which some readers find dilutes the Lou-and-Reid dynamic that sold them the trilogy in the first place. It is a deliberate widening rather than a loss of control, but it does mean the finale reads less like the first book than the first book led you to expect.

What to read next

Kingdom of the Wicked is the nearest neighbour — witches, a hostile marriage, a religious authority in the background. Caraval for the same period-fantasy atmosphere without the theology, and ACOTAR for the big-canvas version.