this romantasy book put me in a slump. maybe it's my fault that i had high expectations for it, but i really did try to like it (i could show you my annotations in part one of the book as proof).

this direct quote from the book really convinced me that this book will revolve around iris and roman unravelling the true mystery behind the myth about the god and goddess—why and how the war happened, but i was really wrong.

storyline
the beginning was super promising; the author tells the readers about the five gods (dacre, enva, mir, alva, and luz), the fight that happened between dacre and enva, about skywards (enva's family) and underlings (dacre's family). how could you not get intrigued with all these elements?the way the author portrays the myth piqued my interest, but that's that. the myth is never mentioned again in the rest of the book.

the book instead focuses on the slow-burn romance between iris and roman, surviving the war as journalists, the war that was incited by the gods (that we never knew what actually happened). the myth is what encouraged me to continue reading so i was left anticipating something that never appears in the book. the tiny sprinkle of fantasy in this book is only the gods' myth, the magical typewriter and buildings in the town, and the creatures that dacre use in the war. i think that's it.

nonetheless i still tried to enjoy the romance, but i just couldn't. although iris and roman's interactions as office rivals are cute in the beginning and i genuinely enjoyed it, it eventually lost me as the story progressed. roman's feelings towards iris are well-written (though i think it could've been developed further) and carver's words on the letters gave me hope for their romance

(though an "i love you" from carver feels too sudden for me)

.... iris's feelings however didn't do it for me. there were inadequate scenes and emotions between iris and roman before coming to the war, so for her to yearn that much for roman, for her to think that she “couldn't bear to live in a world without him", i feel that their chemistry is under-developed and the connection that iris has towards roman felt forced. there were many wasted potentials—scenes that i feel the author could further develop, to expand the slow-burn, tension, and yearning between iris and roman.

writing and pace
the writing in general is flowery and beautiful. the prologue of iris sending her brother, forest, to the war hooked me straight away. Ross has a whimsical writing from the start and i was really convinced that i would enjoy the book. but the story is too slow-paced for me that i couldn't help but began to read the lines as merely words and sentences, rather than as a story; i noticed some scenes written come off a bit two-dimensional.

e.g., roman requesting to join iris as war correspondents at the front line but there's only one available seat, but somehow with just a *little* convincing to the captain, roman got the chance to join iris.

maybe because it's a YA fantasy? but some scenes really feel rather too cartoonish for me.

depth of the story
it also doesn't sit right with me when some (potential) important scenes lack descriptions, such as the scene where attie (a fellow war correspondent) got the opportunity to be in the front line but when she got back to iris and marisol, the only conversation addressed about it is attie saying the front line was grueling and that she didn't want to talk about it yet, "not now", she needs to process it first and that's that. yes, attie did indeed explain to iris that she finally understood, 

i apologise for being a visual-person, but attie doesn't picture anything about the situations currently happening in the front line. it's like delivering emotions without context. another potential wasted because it could've been a pivotal scene or a moment of realisation that this war is real, that this war is not something happening faraway and it could reach you in any second, that this war kills people, real person. i think this was my final straw before i began to wonder if the author actually only wanted to write a romance book where the love interests anonymously send letters back and forth, but comes up with a romantasy instead with very tiny bit of fantasy and little to none world-building.

with all these being said, this book really had potential, but the execution was a miss for me. if you're interested to read divine rivals, just be sure that you're in for the right plot, that is a slow-burn ROMANtasy (upper caps because it's really focused on romance) in a war setting. i'm happy for you if you end up loving the book, happy reading!