“No God, no creature, no war can come between them”
At A Glance
- Young Adult
- Romance
- Fantasy
- Magic
- Historical
- Duology book one
For Fans Of
- Leigh Bardugo
- Laini Taylor
- Jennifer L. Armentrout
- Stephanie Garber
Star Rating
Buy From: Amazon | Waterstones
See it on Goodreads
Divine Rivals Review
As Goodreads Choice Award winner for Best YA Fantasy & Science Fiction, we went into Divine Rivals with high hopes, but unfortunately came away feeling a bit confused about its popularity. Note that despite our opinion, this book has a whopping 4.27/5 rating on Goodreads at time of writing from more than 200,000 reviews, so we’re among a minority here, but until the last 10% of Divine Rivals we were considering three stars or maybe even less. The ending definitely made up for the rest of the book and we’re excited to read the conclusion in Ruthless Vows, but it took a long and slow slog to get there.
Divine Rivals has a touch of magic, a huge helping of romance and a historical vibe mixed in, but all three of these elements felt a bit lacklustre to us. You’ll follow Iris and Roman, rival journalists that find themselves embarking on a dangerous endeavour among a terrifying war between Gods. It’s enemies to lovers but there is a very speedy and unconvincing transition between those two polarising relationship statuses that left us feeling unpleasantly dizzy.
There’s also very little world building happening here – our favourite part is the idea that there are enchanted buildings and magic typewriters but even that is so briefly touched upon we don’t really understand how or why these things exist. There are terrifying creatures involved in the war but we couldn’t tell you much about those either.
Overall it’s enjoyable and beautifully written, the romance feels cosy and wholesome, the ending is intriguing and you’ll want to read more to find out the fate of its characters, but there’s something fanfiction about this book and it’s hard to understand the hype.
We’d love to know if you’ve read Divine Rivals and what you thought about it. If you loved it, help us understand why, because we feel like we must be missing something!
