First things first, merry Christmas or happy holidays if you don’t celebrate Christmas!

It has been a long, long while since I first picked up a book by Rebecca Ross. I remember this was the Dutch translation for The Queens Rising and I also remember that I had no idea what to think of this book after finishing it. I haven’t picked up a book by this author ever since, it just didn’t happen. This year, Ross published a new book called Divine Rivals. This got a lot of attention and praise. I decided to ignore it for as long as possible, because I just don’t often vibe with hypes. I had a feeling this one wouldn’t be for me. However, it’s on many people’s favorite books of the year list, so there was no more excuse to not see for myself whether I would understand the hype or not. And so I did!

About the book

• Title: Divine Rivals
• Author: Rebecca Ross
• Series: Letters of Enchantment #1
• Publication date: April 4, 2023
• Publisher: Wednesday Books
• ISBN: 9781250857439
• Number of pages: 357
• Genre: Fantasy, Young Adult, Romance

When two young rival journalists find love through a magical connection, they must face the depths of hell, in a war among gods, to seal their fate forever. After centuries of sleep, the gods are warring again. But eighteen-year-old Iris Winnow just wants to hold her family together. Her mother is suffering from addiction and her brother is missing from the front lines. Her best bet is to win the columnist promotion at the Oath Gazette. To combat her worries, Iris writes letters to her brother and slips them beneath her wardrobe door, where they vanish—into the hands of Roman Kitt, her cold and handsome rival at the paper. When he anonymously writes Iris back, the two of them forge a connection that will follow Iris all the way to the front lines of battle: for her brother, the fate of mankind, and love. Shadow and Bone meets Lore in Rebecca Ross’s Divine Rivals, an epic enemies-to-lovers fantasy novel filled with hope and heartbreak, and the unparalleled power of love.

My review

Expectations

I tried to keep these as low as possible, because this book is tremendously hyped and past reading experiences taught me how well I can or can’t vibe with hypes. So, I wanted to minimize the chances of getting disappointed by high expectations. However, I have to admit that everyone raging about this book didn’t help much. Subconciously, expectations are set higher than I initially meant them to be. Nevertheless, I expected to get both romance and action since the fundament of this story is a war. Unfortunately, my expectations were not met regarding the latter one. There’s a lot of romance, but I’ll come back to that.

Characters

Our main characters are Iris and Roman, who come from diffferent backgrounds. Iris is living in poverty since her brother Forest went to fight in the war and her mom has become addicted to alcohol. Roman on the other hand is from a much wealthier background. However, they both have to deal with a lot. They work at their local newspaper and their rivalry is about getting the position as columnist. When things drastically changes for one of the characters, their rivalry changes too. When Iris starts writing letters to her brother Forest, she never gets a reply. Until one day, but not from her brother. She however keeps writing and the mysterious responder keeps replying. It takes her a long time to find out who this mysterious responder is, but for the readers it’s obvious early on in the book. When circumstances force Iris and Roman to spend more time together they initially intended, they both grow so much individually and together. Nevertheless, i find them a little dull for my liking. There’s not much chemistry, their character development is quite rapid, so is the romance. I also had a tough time connecting to any of the characters and none stood out to me.

Writing

Ross has an easy writing style. This is much different from my earlier reading experience with The Queens Rising. The chapters are quite short and POVs alternate between Iris and Roman on multiple occasions. However, most of the story is told from Iris’ Pov, we see much more from her. That doesn’t mean we get to know her the best, I think we get to know both our main characters equally. Furthermore, the book reads fast because of these short chapters and accessible writing.

Plot

Okay, it’s confession time here. I didn’t like the plot. In fact, I found it quite dull. I mean, there’s a war and you go to the frontlines? Why is the plot moving so fast and leaves out so many action scenes? The pacing felt a little off to me, the first 70-80% of the book is quite slow. There’s more focus on the characters et cetera in the first two parts of the book, before stuff actually comes down. It left me longing a bit, because I just wasn’t invested. I was able to finish the book quite quickly, but I kept picking up another book instead. I just wasn’t that curious for what would happen next. However, the epilogue slightly changes this because of its giant cliffhanger.

Final thoughts

I have to admit that I didn’t really enjoy Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross. It’s definitely not a bad book, but i wasn’t invested in it either. Both characters and storyline were quite boring to me, but this could also have to do with my expectations. The writing was easy and accessible. The dual POV narration works really well, so do the short chapters. The ending makes me curious for the evolvement of Iris’ and Roman’s story in Ruthless Vows, but it’s not on my priority list for now.