Divine Rivals, by Rebecca Ross - Julia
During the summer, when I had first heard about Divine Rivals, it felt like everyone was reading and loving it. At the time I wasn’t too interested in it as I wasn’t in a mood for fantasy and wanted to read it during the colder months. While in Oxford, I saw the hardback and decided to get it and read it. Going into it, I had high expectations as everyone seemed to love it and it had a rating of 4.27 on Goodreads. However, those expectations were not met and I did not like this book.
Divine Rivals is about two young rival journalists, Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt, who both are working at the Oath Gazette. Iris wants to hold her family together as her brother is fighting in the war while her mother is drowning her sorrows. Roman Kitt comes from a wealthy family that has high expectations of him. At the oath gazette, they are both known as some of the best reporters so they both have the chance to be promoted to columnist. This is where their rivalry started and why they are enemies. Iris Winnow is always writing letters to her brother in hopes that they will eventually reach him and he can respond, but when her letters accidentally get into the hands of Roman Kitt, a magic connection forms between them.
First of all, I didn’t see where they were enemies. In my opinion, they didn’t like each other but they didn’t hate each other. And you could see that they fancied each other early on. Additionally, I found the first 150 pages to be rather slow, and I would find myself getting bored quite quickly which doesn’t normally happen. I also didn’t like what happened after they got together as it felt too quick for me.
To me, it didn’t feel like a fantasy. It felt more like a historical book, and I felt like Rebecca Ross could have done more with the magic that was going on. On the other hand, it was easy to follow and I didn’t get confused.
I would personally only really recommend this to people who are trying to get into fantasy. Overall I gave this 2/5 stars.
Julia
