Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

Am I getting to finally write this review very late? Like nearly a year and a half late? Yes.
Did this book reach it’s grubby little paws into my chest and take over my heart? Yes.
So here is a vastly under-needed book review for a story that went viral, but one that I still think is worth sharing.

Rebecca Ross has been an auto-buy author for me since I fell in love with her Queen’s Rising series. Which while the series came out in 2018, I didn’t find it until 2021 when I was starting to dive into audiobooks deeply–and when I started falling very behind on blogging. I loved the premise behind it but I loved her writing even more. Fast forward to when a friend was able to read Divine Rivals early, wasn’t legally allowed to tell us about it, but all she said was that it was one of the best stories she’s read… I was on tenterhooks waiting for it to be released.

And then… I got approved for the ARC, right before I moved, right before I got my new job. I started reading, got about 80 pages in, and knew it was going to emotionally devastate me. I didn’t have time on that trip to read the rest of the book at once, so I set it down. And after my life finally got settled again I was so intimidated by it, by the beautiful editions that arrived, I told myself to wait for the perfect moment. Friends I don’t know who else does this, but while I fully believe that the story will come to you at the right time, waiting for the perfect moment for anything is just depriving yourself. So after a friend came over and I sent her home with one of my copies. I finally just pulled it down and read it. All in one sitting. I think I read it in less than three hours? Or maybe just over. However, I was obsessed.

While I knew it was going to be vaguely magical realism, I didn’t realize quite how full of magic this story would be, how the world is full of magic, how the gods interacting with the war is much more real than I’d expected. Additionally for a war book… I don’t know what I was expecting, but the grittiness that this has was not it. Even though I’ve read books where she’s written battle scenes, this had a much different feel. Overall while I’d say the setting is dark, it’s not desolate. But the grittiness, the striving, the struggle of the characters bleeds through. While the setting is such a huge part of the story, at it’s core this is a love story and that gives the tale more whimsy, more hope, and I ate it up like it was a pan of brownies.

I loved the determination to prove themselves that both Roman and Iris have. I loved getting to see from both of their eyes and follow their relationship from rivals to lovers. The letters. TEAM THE LETTERS. They were everything. I am a sucker for an epistolary, for any kind of ephemera. So to have it within the text to be formatted so beautifully that you feel like you are reading over the character’s shoulders? Amazing.

Fair warning. It ends on a cliff hanger, and I was not ready. My heart was not ready for being crumpled up and then stretched out again. I immediately called my friend to freak out to her. I then went back and wrote down three pages of quotes that just hit my heart. I was already going to be a goner for this story but, not am I uniquely able to cosplay Iris as her features nearly match mine, but we find out in the story that her two favorite flowers are Lilacs and Irises… which are my favorite flowers and always have been. So this review of sheer gushing is probably a bit biased, but really when a book touches you this deeply, you need to share it with everyone else.

Looking to find Divine Rivals? Here you go!:

Bookshop.org ~ Libro.fm ~ Goodreads ~ Storygraph

If you want to see me scream about it right after I finished reading you can find that here:

As a side note, some of the links to Bookshop.org or Libro.fm will either provide me or an indie bookshop I support a portion of the affiliate sales if you use them to buy a book I recommend!