Fantasy: Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

7.5-8/10 

Dear Reader, 

This novel follows the story of Iris Winnow, the younger sister of Forest who goes off to fight in the war for the God of Enva against Dacre. In the six months that he’s been gone, Iris dropped out of school and got a job at the Gazette while her mother drank her life away. While working on the newspaper, Iris meets her new rival head on. His name; Roman C. Kitt. Iris and Roman are up for the columnist position at the newspaper, and are currently competing for the job. 

Whenever Iris returns home, after passing her drunk mother on the couch, goes to her room and writes on her grandmother’s old typewriter. She places the letter in her wardrobe where it whisked away into the night. 

Iris believes, or hopes really, that these letters are traveling to her brother Forest who is on the front lines. In reality, what she doesn’t know is that Roman is receiving the letters. At first he believes it’s some sort of trick, some ploy to get him to slip up in their competition for the columnist position, however he quickly finds himself looking forward to these letters. Then, one day, he answers. 

This is where this novel starts, but it ends somewhere completely different. Hundreds of kilometers difference. I won’t lie, the first half of the book was slow and kind of depressing. Iris was down in the gutter, and her life did a complete 180 in the course of six months. From an amazing student with high prospects with a good family, to a drop out who’s struggling to pay the bills with her mother spending half of their money on alcohol. 

The writing itself was what kept me going, it was an easy read and mostly easy to follow. The only thing that got confusing were all the myths of Dacre and Enva, and the logistics of the magic and how it all works. I didn’t understand if people were supposed to root for Dacre or Enva, people were on both sides of the war and at no point did Iris explain who the “good” and the “bad” was. From what I read, my guess is that Dacre is the bad guy and Enva is the good guy, but I could be wrong.

The story really picks up in the second half when we get a change of setting, from Oath to Avalon Bluff. From this point forward the action kicks into high gear, and the romance starts to become the forefront of the story. One thing I didn’t enjoy about this romance was that it was technically a love triangle, she was in love with Carver and Roman, not knowing they were the same person. It wasn’t that the love triangle idea was bad, it just wasn’t discussed enough. If she was truly falling in love with two people, the words and the person, shouldn’t there have been more of an inner conflict? At least, I think there should’ve been. 

-Grace Sofia