A review by readyforit
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

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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