Review: Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
From the publisher:
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.
Review:
I received this copy of Divine Rivals in my Owlcrate box and was very meh about it. I had heard a lot of good things, but what I heard suggested a dark academia vibe and that’s not really for me. I also had started Dreams Lie Beneath five or six times and kept having to put it down because my mind wandered while reading. However, as part of my “read the books that come in your book boxes or cancel them” resolution (and because I read a review saying this was one of their only five star reads this year), I decided to dive in. The book is also on Kindle Unlimited, so I downloaded it for easier reading.
I was very pleasantly surprised at how much I loved this book. The story is told from two POV’s and follows both Iris and Roman. Iris is a poor aspiring writer as she navigates life during war. Her brother has left to fight for the goddess Enva and her mother has turned to alcohol to cope. Iris drops out of high school and takes a job at the local newspaper in order to support them. Roman comes from a nouveaux riche family with aspirations of breaking into high society. Roman is forced to give up his dream of academia and studying literature and forced to find respectable employment as a columnist of the local and prestigious newspaper. Upon meeting, Iris and Roman become bitter rivals, but through a weird twist of fate, both own ensorcelled typewriters that connect them. Iris starts sending letters through her wardrobe to her lost at war brother and they end up in Roman’s hands. He knows immediately they’re from Iris, but starts to fall in love a little bit through them and starts corresponding back to her. It definitely gave some “You’ve Got Mail” vibes, but then Iris leaves the paper to become a war correspondent and things change.
The story does enemies to lovers in a unique way and does a good job capturing the emotions of war. It takes some twists and turns that I didn’t see coming and ends on a cliffhanger, so be warned about that. I am eagerly awaiting the sequel and can’t wait to see how Iris and Roman’s story ends!
5/5 stars - there is a fade to black non-descriptive sex scene and descriptive war injuries