You write a letter to a brother who might already be dead, slip it behind an old wardrobe, and a stranger writes back.
That’s where Rebecca Ross starts Divine Rivals, her 2023 young adult fantasy about rival student journalists Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt, who don’t know they’re writing to each other through a gap between worlds while two gods wage a war that keeps swallowing the people they love.
That is the divine rival’s summary in one breath.
The letters do the real work. Before Iris and Roman learn who’s on the other end, they fall for each other on paper first, despite hating each other in the newsroom.
Maybe BookTok already spoiled the ending.
Maybe you’re deciding if it’s worth reading before the sequel. Either way, here’s the plot, the characters, and exactly how it ends.
Divine Rivals Summary
Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross follows Iris Winnow, an 18-year-old journalist in the city of Oath, whose private letters to her missing brother reach her newsroom rival, Roman Kitt, through enchanted typewriters.
Roman answers anonymously; the two fall for each other on paper, and a war between the gods Dacre and Enva pulls them toward the front lines.
Wednesday Books published the novel on April 4, 2023, as a 368-page hardcover, and Common Sense Media’s age rating lists it for readers 13 and up.
It is a young adult historical fantasy and the first half of the Letters of Enchantment duology, which Ross finished with Ruthless Vows on December 26, 2023.
Much of the love story unfolds through letters rather than conversation, which is why the book is often described as an epistolary romance.
The story is set in Oath, a city whose newsroom banter and typewriters feel like the early twentieth century until the gods wake up.
Dacre, the Underling god, and Enva, the Skyward goddess, once fought a divine war that ended when Enva’s music put the gods to sleep.
Both have now woken, Dacre is attacking mortals, and Enva’s side is recruiting human soldiers.
Divine Rivals Characters
Now that the world is set, it helps to know who is writing to whom and who stands around them.
Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt
Iris is 18, short on money, and determined to win the one open columnist spot at the Oath Gazette so she can keep her family afloat.
Her older brother Forest has gone to war, and her mother has fallen into alcohol addiction since he left.
Roman is 19, wealthy, and talented enough that Iris treats him as the obstacle between her and the promotion.
What she doesn’t see is that his money comes with a leash: His domineering father expects obedience, including a marriage arranged for him.
Roman carries guilt over his younger sister’s death years earlier.
Both of them love words, both are grieving, and the newsroom rivalry hides how much they have in common.
Forest Winnow and the Two Gods
Forest is the reason the story moves. He enlisted to fight for Enva and has not been heard from since, which is why Iris writes to him at all.
Dacre and Enva stay in the background of most scenes as a force rather than as characters, which keeps the focus on the journalists while the war creeps closer.
By the final chapters, the gods’ feud and Forest’s fate have merged into a single problem.
Attie, Marisol, and Keegan
At the front, Iris meets the people who shape her time there. Attie is a fellow war correspondent and a sharp reporter who becomes Iris’s friend.
Marisol runs the bed-and-breakfast in Avalon Bluff where the correspondents stay, and her wife, Keegan, is a soldier serving in the war.
Key Events in Divine Rivals (Spoilers)
With the cast in place, here is the story as it unfolds, from the first letter to the moment the truth comes out.
Rivals at the Oath Gazette and the Wardrobe Letters
Iris and Roman are pitted against each other for the columnist job, and their office rivalry never lets up.
At night, Iris types letters to Forest and slides them under her wardrobe door, where they disappear.
She believes they reach her brother, but they actually arrive at Roman’s end through linked magical typewriters, and he recognizes her voice almost at once.
When he finally replies, he signs as Carver, tells her he is not Forest, and Iris keeps writing anyway.
Roman knows exactly who she is from the start, while Iris doesn’t learn the truth for months, so the two trade secrets at night that they would never admit at work.
Then life at home falls apart. Iris’s mother dies, and after she loses the columnist spot, Iris resigns from the Gazette.
Iris Leaves for the Front Lines
Iris takes a job as a war correspondent for the Inkridden Tribune, hoping the front will lead her to Forest.
She is stationed in Avalon Bluff, a town roughly 80 kilometers (about 50 miles) from the fighting, where she stays with Attie and Marisol.
Iris writes letters for wounded soldiers at the infirmary and keeps writing to Carver, and she discovers that her typewriter, not her wardrobe, now carries the messages.
Roman follows her to Avalon Bluff, and the two end up working near the fighting, where Dacre’s winged eithrals drop bombs on anything that moves.
Roman is hurt along the way and ends up recovering in the infirmary.
Carver Revealed in the Infirmary
Roman finally finds the courage to write a letter admitting the truth, and Iris reads it while he is in the infirmary.
She puts the pieces together, finds her own letters in his bag, and storms in angry, because Roman knew who she was while she was opening up to a stranger.
He kisses her, she flees, and only later, after deciding that her feelings for Carver and for Roman are the same, does she forgive him.
The pen name was never far from the truth, since his full name is Roman Carver Kitt.
Divine Rivals Climax and Ending Explained
Everything the story has built, from the rivalry to the letters to the war, collides in the last stretch of the book.
The Attack on Avalon Bluff
As Dacre’s forces close in and the evacuation siren sounds, Iris chooses to stay in case Forest finds his way to her, and Roman refuses to leave her side.
They marry in Marisol’s garden and spend one night together. At dawn, Dacre’s Eithrals bomb Avalon Bluff with gas, and in the chaos a masked figure drags Iris away.
She thinks it is Roman. It is Forest.
Divine Rivals Ending Explained
At the end of Divine Rivals, Forest takes Iris back to Oath after Dacre’s gas attack on Avalon Bluff, leaving Roman behind.
Dacre then finds Roman badly hurt, heals him, and takes him to the underworld, so the book closes with the newlyweds separated and Roman in the hands of Iris’s enemy.
The reveal about Forest is the hardest turn in the book. Mortally wounded at the front, he was healed by Dacre and pressed into the god’s service, and he explains this only after he brings Iris home.
A locket from home that he found in a trench is what pushed him to look for his sister.
Iris crossed a war zone to find her brother, and she gets him back within hours of marrying a husband she now cannot reach.
The cliffhanger is deliberate, and it turns her search into a trap: finding one person means losing the other.
About the Author: Rebecca Ross
Rebecca Ross is a #1 New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author who writes fantasy for teens and adults.
She grew up in Georgia and lives in the northeastern part of the state with her husband and their Australian Shepherd.
Before Divine Rivals, she wrote The Queen’s Rising duology and the standalone Sisters of Sword and Song.
She followed the Letters of Enchantment duology with the Elements of Cadence duology, which begins with A River Enchanted.
Divine Rivals and Ruthless Vows both became New York Times bestsellers in 2023.
Final Takeaways
This Divine Rivals summary comes down to one idea: Two people who can’t stand each other at work are the same two people who tell each other everything at night, and the war forces them to see it.
The plot moves from a newsroom contest to secret letters, then from Avalon Bluff to a gas attack that splits Iris and Roman at the end.
Forest returns changed, Roman falls into Dacre’s hands, and the book stops on that loss.
Because it ends mid-crisis, read Ruthless Vows next, which Wednesday Books released on December 26, 2023, and which opens two weeks after Iris returns home from the front.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Divine Rivals Spicy?
No. Common Sense Media’s review describes a few intense kisses and one brief, non-graphic wedding-night scene, with the emphasis on emotion rather than physical detail. Readers looking for open-door romance will find this closer to sweet than steamy.
Is Divine Rivals Becoming a Movie?
Yes. Deadline reported in June 2025 that Paramount Pictures won the film rights after a multi-studio bidding war, with Sofia Alvarez writing the screenplay and Rebecca Ross serving as an executive producer. Coverage from February 2026 still listed no cast or release date.
Will There Be a Book 3 of Divine Rivals?
No. Letters of Enchantment is a finished duology that ends with Ruthless Vows. Ross did publish Wild Reverence on September 2, 2025, an adult standalone romantasy set in the same world, and she told Business Insider it was written so newcomers could read it. It is not a continuation of Iris and Roman’s story.
