Reviews with content warning for Classism - Divine Rivals

Holy shit..... Well Rebecca Ross it's on sight girl! Iris is a reporter competing for a columnist spot against fellow reporter, Roman. As Iris writes letter to her brother who's away at war, she tucks them away inside her closet. These letter end up in the hands of her rival, Roman, who begins to write her back. As war tears across the country and propaganda and misinformation reigns supreme, Iris and Roman create a magical friendship through letters. I adore this story! It's just magical enough to be not realistic but not too crazy as to be hard to understand and follow. Iris is a strong and yet logical and likable character. She makes normal choices and thinks through her issues before jumping into action. Roman is adorable and this conclusion makes me mad af. Like gotta go read Ruthless Vows brb. My only issue with this book is that the start is slow and the world building isn't explained very well until later.

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purplepenning's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes

4.25

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filipa_maia's review against another edition

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adventurous emotional funny hopeful sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

This book was such a surprise! I was not expecting to become so invested in this characters and a story about war.

I like how strong Iris is, I like how fearless Kitt is, I like Attie, and Marisol - this book has bunch of interesting and unique characters.

I loved all the twists and turns the plot took, just when I thought I had everything figured out, something completely blindsided me and I was caught of guard.

I can't wait to read the second book, find out more about these Gods, about Forest and how it will all end.

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readyforit's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

2⭐️0.25🌶️(nearly fade to black, nondescript)
If you are a person who never asks questions and can just accept the information you’re given, you may enjoy this book. The author does a pretty terrible job of world-building and explaining the magic system. We assume the story takes place on our earth, but the country isn’t named. Idk if it was meant to be England or a completely fictional land altogether. They have different names for months and days of the week, but the order of them isn’t explained. The magic of the typewriters is never explained (why is the wardrobe necessary?), nor the magical buildings (until book 2, and even then it’s not really that important). I think they could’ve cut half of the more mundane stuff and used that to either combine it with the sequel, or do a lot more world-building.

This book would’ve done better as a historical fiction book, without marketing it as fantasy or romance, since it has very little of either. The war was obviously based off of WWI, so the author should’ve just set it up as that, and added the magical typewriter element for fun. Also, this book was marketed as an enemies/rivals to lovers story and we never got that. It’s more like acquaintances to lovers, or a workplace romance. Tbh I didn’t think that the MCs had very good chemistry and I didn’t understand why they made some of their choices. I did think some of their letters were sweet but the whole storyline of Roman

waiting to tell iris that he was the anonymous person she was sending letters to until she had developed feelings for him, both as her coworker and her penpal, rubbed me the wrong way. Like the author was trying to force a love triangle or miscommunication trope.

Then they got married all of the sudden, just so they could spend the night together, which made sense after I found out the author is religious.

I wanted to DNF at 20% and 50% but this book came so highly recommended, with many people saying it is their new favorite book. I was so bored the whole time. Don’t feel guilty for DNFing, you won’t miss much. I’m sorry to say that even the audiobook narrators sounded bored, and who could blame them?

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maddy707's review against another edition

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emotional funny tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

5.0

Here’s what I liked:

The writing style. It’s exactly what I look for in a book. A balance between lyrical and not. The flow of the writing and the pacing of this book is perfect.

The character’s. I loved all of the main characters in this book, especially Iris and Roman.

The exploration of grief. It was beautifully written.

Here’s what I didn’t like (none of these things were enough to drag the book down for me):

Once the romance actually turned into a romance it went EXTREMELY QUICK. At first I didn’t like it but then the themes of the book came into play. This story tells us that life is fleeting because of the threat of war and how so much can be ripped away from someone in a single day. So the choice of Roman and Kitt getting married straight away actually makes sense when you think about it.

The ending is a bit miffy. It was so… abrupt. But again that’s what the book told us. I think it felt so rushed and quick because the author needs to lead into the next book, which I imagine is going to focus a lot more on the war. She just wasn’t able to do it as smoothly as it should’ve been. Maybe an extra 50 pages would have helped.

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amy_q13's review against another edition

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adventurous dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.0

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amy_in_the_city's review against another edition

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dark emotional sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.75

I loved the epistolary elements of this book, and the writing was absolutely beautiful! The love story felt very Pride & Prejudice-inspired. I liked the setting, but I thought there could have been a bit more worldbuilding. The fantasy elements (other than the magic typewriters and Kitt's magic house) felt too abstract. I don't feel like I got a good sense of the gods and the monsters, but I'm assuming that will be explored more in the sequel. Still, for most of the book, I felt like I was just reading a WWI historical novel instead of a different fantasy world inspired by WWI. I didn't understand the main characters' decision to

stay and defend the town even though they were not soldiers and had no fighting training or equipment. They didn't accomplish anything at all by staying, so the decision felt contrived for plot reasons.

. Another thing that seemed contrived for plot reasons is

Forest not revealing himself sooner and instead deciding that waiting to kidnap Iris during battle was the best course of action.

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readingduckling's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging dark emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? No

5.0

The book is beautifully written but extremely sad an I would recommend to check trigger warnings and maybe being in a stable headspace and maybe already own the second book so you can continue reading.

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