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Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

Series:
Letters of Enchantment #1

Genre:
Historical Fiction, Mythology, Romance, Fantasy, Young Adult, Historical, Enemies to Lovers, Gods Walking With Humans, Dual Points of View, Rivals to Lovers, Cliffhanger, Paranormal, Science Fiction, Book Series, Romantasy

Publication Date:
April 4, 2023

Pages Numbers:
368

Read Date:
July 25th, 2023

Date Finished:
July 25th, 2023

Rating:
5/5

Blurb:

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.

Review:

I have had this book on my TBR ever since it came out and I had always kept promising myself that I would eventually read it. Now, I am hitting myself for not reading this book sooner. The characters, the world-building, and the fact that the Gods walked among the mortal world was something quite different than I expected.

The relationship between Enva and Dacre feels a bit like a version of Hades and Persephone. After all, it was Dacre who had seen Enva among the mortal realm, plucking the strings of her instrument, and offering a song for the dead. This is how he finds her and he knows he must have her. Though he tries numerous times to coax her below, she declines time and time again until Dacre takes matters into his own hands and brings her down himself. This plot is slightly reminiscent of the storyline of Hades and Persephone. It may or may not have been the bases of their relationship. Either way, Enva uses the strings of her instrument to put down Dacre to sleep while she, once more escapes to the world above.

This angers Dacre and because of this, both he and Enva use the mortal realm for their war and draw in the humans to be part of it. For me, this seems a bit selfish on both of their parts. They might have their own flaws but at the same time, they are using humans for their war with really no care for the lives lost on both sides.

On the other side of the spectrum, we have Iris and Roman. Both are incredibly talented in their field and both are rivals of the same newspaper. Both worked hard to achieve gaining the promotion that the paper offered. Both come from different parts of society, while Roman is upper-class, Iris is different. Her mother is an alcoholic and her brother has gone off to join the war. This leaves Iris to be the one who takes care of not only their mother but be the one who is constantly bringing the money home.

While her mother has squandered her life on drink, Iris struggles to keep them afloat and the only thing in her life that offers any comfort is the typewriter that her grandmother left her. Every night, she uses it to write letters to her brother. Only to find them having disappeared the next day or in front of her. She never expects any reply until one day, a reply is sent back - the writer is not her brother but someone else.

I loved this book. I loved the complex characters, and the unique world-building with the mythology and urban fantasy blending together, captivating and drawing in the reader into this world.