Iris Winnow sacrifices almost everything because of an ancient war between gods in Rebecca Ross’ Divine Rivals: her brother’s support as he fights in the war for the goddess Enva, her mother’s sobriety, and her last year of high school. To support her family, her only hope lies in her potential future as a columnist for the Oath Gazette. However, 19-year-old Roman C. Kitt stands in her way as her only competitor for the position. 

With the added pressure of her home life and a mounting frustration at the Oath Gazette’s silence on reporting on the war suffocates Iris. Her only way to escape reality becomes writing letters to her brother, Forest, on her grandmother’s typewriter. By some unexplainable magic, slipping the letters under the door of the closet she once shared with Forest makes them disappear, as if absorbed by the closet. She can only hope that they’re somehow getting to her brother, but her spirits are crushed when she finally gets a response with just three words: this isn’t Forest. Rather, it’s her rival Roman Kitt, who soon becomes her only support system as they navigate the discord war created around them—anonymously. 

Inspired to finally write and share the truth as she’s always dreamed, she finds herself on the front lines of the war between Dacre and Enva but to her surprise, not only do her mystery pen pal’s letters continue to reach her, but Roman Kitt manages to, too. A large part of the book focuses on the enemies-to-lovers romance between Roman and Iris and the myths that underlie this war, but despite their passion for reporting on what the war was really like, the tradeoff was that there was less of a focus on interactions with the soldiers. 

Rebecca Ross, Iris, and Roman’s writing—a lot of the book contained Iris and Roman’s letters to each other, which were also how most of the myths were shared—were all captivating and richly painted the broken world of the story, and the characters were well-developed with an individual past and motivations, but the pacing could feel a little awkward, especially with Iris and Roman’s relationship which spontaneously progressed quickly towards the end of the book. 

Ross saves some mysteries unsolved with the war and the reasons for it for the second book, and leaves readers on a cliffhanger to spark an interest in the other half of the duology, Ruthless Vows. Divine Rivals is a tense, emotional story of finding and fighting for love in chaos that leaves readers a well-balanced mix of satisfaction and craving for more.