Title: Divine Rivals*
Author: Rebecca Ross
Rating: 2.25 stars / 5 stars
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Favorite Quote: “Sometimes when it rained, flowers would bloom in the most unexpected places – teacups and vases and even old shoes.” Ross, Rebecca. Divine Rivals. Wednesday Books, 2023, p. 37.
Review: This is going to be controversial. Oops.
Divine Rivals follows two characters as they become war correspondents in the war between the gods in their world. They begin as rivals at a newspaper, though both discover, individually, that they can send letters to an unknown person because of their magical typewriters. [SPOILERS AHEAD] Ultimately, they find out they’re writing to each other, they call in love, they get married, and then more chaos ensues as the war gets closer.
I want to begin by saying that the concept of enchanted typewriters and getting to communicate that way is something that still appeals to me. It’s why I picked up the book, and candidly, why I stuck with it until the end. Because in recent years, I’ve given myself much more permission to DNF books when I’m not enjoying them…and honestly I thought about that with this book at least every 50ish pages. If not for tandem reading this with the audiobook and the libby book that I could read in bed with my Kindle stand without having to move a muscle (lazy reading is my favorite reading), I probably would have DNF’d it.
Okay, so the good part is the magic typewriters.
The bad part is - almost all of the rest of it.
The characters are poorly developed and any attempts at developing them are quickly left at the wayside - Roman is forced to be engaged, but readers don’t hear about her for the last 3/4s of the book. Iris’s mom dies and her brother goes missing, but she only ever vaguely thinks of her mom mere chapters after her death and her brother only makes occasional appearances in her psyche, even though he’s the whole reason she becomes a correspondent, until the end when it turns out, surprise, surprise, he’s now a soldier for the enemy.
My biggest gripe with this book, however, is the romance. Even though it took quite some time to manifest, it still ultimately felt like rushed, insta-love. First Iris starts falling for whoever she is communicating with. Then she goes back and forth about whether she should. Then she starts maybe, sort-of having feelings but Roman, but he’s her nemesis, so maybe not really. Then, she finds out that he actually is the person she’s writing to and she feels angry and confused because she shared things with him that were so personal, and he manipulated her. Then they’re kissing. Then they’re married.
I don’t read a ton of young adult novels, nor do a read a ton of romance, but I’ve read enough of each genre to know that this isn’t a prime example of either.
About that Quote: Ross can have a way with words, and some of her descriptions are really quite poetic. This is one example. It wasn’t enough to rescue the book, though.
Have you read Divine Rivals? Share your thoughts below! (Also, PS, even if this wasn’t my cup of tea, I still would love to hear your thoughts and if you loved it, then I absolutely love that for you! Not every book has to be great to every person, and I’m just happy to have a community to share my love for books with.)
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