A review by entirelybonkerz
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross

2.0

Is it incredible that reading and writing are accessible to a gigantic public now? Yes. Absolutely. Is it awesome that anyone can write a book about whatever they want and find their crowd? Of course! Do I believe book bloggers and influencers are important and they deserve to get paid for their hard work reading, reviewing and promoting books? With certainty. Do I want the book industry to keep expanding and profiting like a machine for a long time to come? YES.

But I do hate the current oversaturation of titles and all of this trope selling. Trope this, trope that. I don't care if my characters are believable, I don't care if my world is developed. I just care about being able to label my book an ENEMIES TO LOVERS FANTASY, when it isn't either enemies to lover, nor it is fantasy, just so I can sell it on tiktok.

This trend setting thing went SO FAR, that now we have a ROMANTASY genre all by itself. I love some romance in fantasy just as much as the next person, but for us to need to CREATE AN ENTIRE NEW GENRE, it means this isn't fantasy anymore. It's just romance with a few magical elements. I am sorry. This is just a paranormal romance at this point, something that has already existed for nearly two decades.

As for Divine Rivals?

>No, these guys are neither enemies, nor rivals. "The gods are the rivals" No, it is obvious the title encompasses the main couple as well. They are two journalists rivaling each other for the same job.

> Fantasy? Where? Who?

> Enemies to lovers? They flirt with each other from page 1. The entire office knows they want to fuck each other. This was an HR inconvenience at best. They had two fights. One because she offered him a sandwich and he was too busy to say yes to it, and the other one where she calls him a nepo baby. Guess what? He is a nepo baby. (But apparently being honest is the same as being someone's enemy in trope world circus)

Another grievance of mine: Both main characters are authors, and the only way the MMC knew how to compliment the FMC was by complimenting how HAUNTING, BEAUTIFUL, STUNNING, AMAZING her writing was. Which felt a bit like a shameless self insert from the author lol Is her writing good? Yeah, it was well polished. Clean. Well edited. But it was not hauntingly beautiful.

This wouldn't have been such a negative review I guess, if this had been recommended to me in a most accurate way.

So here we go: this is a slow, co-workers to lovers romance, with small supernatural or magical elements. No, there is nothing here that compares it to Shadow and Bone or Lore. No there is nothing here that is Dark Academia like. No there is nothing here that compares this to the Hunger Games or whatever else people lied to you about to try to sell you this book.

Oh, this isn't an enemies to lovers either.

Anyways, just a slow YA wanna be fantasy but not fantasy. It's the hating game all over again basically lol

It was pretty underwhelming to me.

To be fair, it is well written. Slow paced. Pretty tamed and YA which is cute. The audio for this was awesome, the narrators did a great job. But overall, I was just bored and unconvinced the entire time. I kept thinking to myself why should I care about any of this? Her lyric writing did the opposite for me. Instead of making me AWE at the style, it just sounded a little self-serving. Like both characters were too full of themselves. I couldn't connect to either of them and didn't really want for them to be together.

Anyway, this wasn't my cup of tea but maybe it will be yours. Also, PSA: it ends on a cliffhanger.