Books like Divine Rivals

A River Enchanted is Rebecca Ross's adult fantasy debut, and it shares Divine Rivals' gift for weaving romance into a world shaped by invisible forces. Set on the isle of Cadence, the story follows two childhood rivals, Jack and Adaira, who must work together when girls start vanishing from the island. Ross brings the same attention to language and atmosphere here, with music replacing letters as the magical thread that binds the characters.

The Scottish folklore influences give the setting a misty, tactile quality that readers of Divine Rivals will recognize instantly. Where Divine Rivals uses journalism and war correspondence, A River Enchanted uses bardic music and clan politics to create tension between its leads. Both books trust their readers to sit with slow-burn emotion rather than rushing toward resolution.

The found-family dynamics and the way secrets reshape relationships will feel familiar to anyone who loved Iris and Roman's story. This is the ideal next read for someone who wants Ross's signature style in a new setting.

The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy takes the pen-pal romance at the heart of Divine Rivals and drops it into a wildly original fantasy world where the dead rise as marshals patrol the wastelands. Hart and Mercy work at competing funeral homes and despise each other in person, but they have each been writing anonymous letters to a pen pal they are falling for. The dramatic irony drives the entire novel: readers know what the characters do not, and that tension mirrors the magical letter exchange between Iris and Roman.

Aster Glenn Gray's debut has a sharper comedic edge than Divine Rivals, but the emotional core is identical. Both books ask what happens when the person you love on paper turns out to be the person you clash with in real life. The fantasy elements here are stranger and more inventive, with demi-gods and sentient beasts, but the romance stays grounded in genuine vulnerability.

Readers who want that specific thrill of two people falling in love through words before they realize the truth will find exactly that here.

What the River Knows shares Divine Rivals' commitment to a headstrong heroine who refuses to stay on the sidelines. Isabel Ibanez's novel follows Inez, a young Argentine heiress who travels to 1884 Egypt after her parents' suspicious deaths, determined to uncover the truth despite everyone telling her to go home. The historical fantasy setting, lush with Egyptian archaeology and river magic, scratches the same itch as Divine Rivals' war-torn fantasy world.

Both books pair a determined female lead with a guarded love interest who tries to keep her at arm's length, and both let the romance build through shared work and reluctant respect. The sense of place in What the River Knows is extraordinary; readers can practically feel the Nile heat the way they can feel the trenches in Divine Rivals. Ibanez and Ross actually critiqued each other's manuscripts during writing, and that creative kinship shows in the way both novels balance adventure with emotional honesty.

This is a strong pick for readers who want the romance and the mystery in equal measure.

One Dark Window offers a darker, more gothic take on the romantasy formula that made Divine Rivals so popular. Rachel Gillig's debut follows Elspeth, who has hidden a monster inside her mind since childhood, and the mysterious Captain of the Destrier who needs her forbidden magic to save their kingdom. The prose has a dense, atmospheric quality that will appeal to readers who loved Ross's descriptive style, though Gillig leans harder into horror elements and moral ambiguity.

Both novels feature card-based or object-based magic systems that feel tactile and rule-bound, giving the fantasy elements real weight. The romance here burns slower and darker than Iris and Roman's, but it carries the same sense of two people recognizing something essential in each other despite every reason to stay apart. One Dark Window rewards patient readers who enjoy piecing together a complex magic system while watching a love story unfold through meaningful glances and loaded conversations.

If Divine Rivals left you wanting a romantasy with sharper teeth, this delivers.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopaedia of Faeries brings the academic-rivals-to-lovers energy of Divine Rivals into a cozy, folklore-rich fantasy that feels like reading by a fire on a cold night. Heather Fawcett's novel follows Emily Wilde, a prickly, brilliant scholar cataloguing faerie folklore in a remote Scandinavian village, and Wendell Bambleby, her charming rival academic who shows up uninvited. The epistolary framing device, told through Emily's field notes and journal entries, echoes the letter-writing magic of Divine Rivals.

Both books use their academic settings to create natural friction between the leads, and both understand that intellectual respect is the foundation of the best romances. The faerie lore here is drawn from real Northern European traditions, giving the fantasy a grounded, textured feel that matches Ross's attention to worldbuilding detail. Emily Wilde's is lighter in tone than Divine Rivals, with more humor and less war, but the slow thaw of two stubborn people falling for each other hits the same emotional notes.

A perfect pick for readers who want the rivals-to-lovers arc without the battlefield.

The Priory of the Orange Tree scales up the warring-gods mythology of Divine Rivals into a sprawling epic fantasy with a romance that unfolds across multiple continents. Samantha Shannon's standalone novel weaves together four point-of-view characters in a world where an ancient evil stirs and two rival magical traditions must unite. The scope is much larger than Divine Rivals, but the emotional through-line is similar: people on opposite sides of a conflict finding common ground through trust and vulnerability.

Shannon's prose is formal and precise, sharing Ross's gift for making fantasy language feel natural rather than overwrought. The book centers a same-sex romance alongside its political intrigue, and both love stories in the novel share Divine Rivals' theme of connection across dividing lines. At over 800 pages, this is a commitment, but readers who loved the mythological elements of Divine Rivals and wanted more will find this deeply satisfying.

The dragon-rider elements also make it a good bridge for readers who came to Divine Rivals from Fourth Wing.

Heartless Hunter flips the enemies-to-lovers dynamic of Divine Rivals into a cat-and-mouse thriller where the romance carries genuine danger. Kristen Ciccarelli's novel is set in a world where witches are hunted, and follows Rune, a witch hiding in plain sight, and Gideon, a witch hunter who does not know what she is. The tension here runs hotter and more dangerous than in Divine Rivals, because the secret between the leads is not just emotional but life-threatening.

Both books share a fascination with how people connect across ideological divides, and both use their fantasy settings to comment on propaganda and the stories nations tell about their enemies. Ciccarelli's pacing is tighter and more thriller-influenced than Ross's lyrical approach, but she matches Ross's ability to make every interaction between the leads feel loaded with meaning. The dual perspective lets readers see both sides of every loaded conversation, creating the same dramatic irony that makes Divine Rivals' letter exchanges so addictive.

Readers who want the tension turned up to maximum will find this impossible to put down.

Danielle L. Jensen's The Bridge Kingdom is the enemies-to-lovers war romance Divine Rivals readers reach for when they want the longing turned all the way up.

Lara has trained her whole life to marry the enemy king and destroy his kingdom from the inside, which means every soft moment she shares with Aren is one she is supposed to be using against him. The book runs on the same push and pull that makes Iris and Roman ache, two people falling for each other while a war they cannot stop closes in from every side.

Jensen writes the kind of slow burn where a single look carries the weight of a whole battlefield, and the political stakes never let the romance feel weightless. Recommended for Divine Rivals readers who want their star-crossed devotion sharpened into a blade and pointed at a throne.

Ava Reid's A Study in Drowning is the moody, rivalry-driven romance Divine Rivals fans will fall into headfirst. Effy is an architecture student in a country still bruised by war, and when she wins a commission to redesign the crumbling home of her favorite dead author, she has to share the house with Preston, a literature scholar determined to prove the man was a fraud.

The two circle each other with the same wary, sparring tenderness that defines Iris and Roman, trading insults that slowly warm into something neither one will name. Reid layers in fae folklore, a drowning sea, and a heroine learning to trust her own mind, all wrapped in prose as atmospheric as a storm rolling off the water.

Recommended for Divine Rivals readers who want the same rivals-turned-something-more ache set inside a haunted, gothic frame.

Naomi Novik's Uprooted gives Divine Rivals readers the cozy-meets-epic sweep they love, built out of Polish folklore and a slow-warming bond between a plainspoken village girl and a cold, prickly wizard. Every ten years the Dragon takes a young woman from Agnieszka's valley, and when he chooses her instead of her beautiful best friend, she is dragged into a life of spellcraft, court politics, and a war against a malevolent Wood that swallows everything it touches.

The bickering, exasperated chemistry between Agnieszka and the wizard Sarkan will feel instantly familiar to anyone who fell for Iris and Roman's rivalry. Novik balances quiet, homey magic against enormous stakes, the same way Divine Rivals folds tender letters into a godly war.

Recommended for readers who want that mix of warmth and world-ending danger in a standalone.

Margaret Rogerson's Sorcery of Thorns is a standalone that Divine Rivals readers will love for its bookish heart and its slow-burn rivalry. Elisabeth grew up as an orphan inside a Great Library where the books are living, dangerous grimoires that whisper and thrash on their chains, and when one is sabotaged into a monster she is thrown together with Nathaniel, a sardonic young sorcerer she has been raised to distrust.

Their sniping, reluctant partnership warms into exactly the kind of tender rivalry that makes Iris and Roman sing, with a heroine whose love of books anchors the whole story. Rogerson keeps the tone warm even as the stakes climb toward a kingdom-threatening plot.

Hidden gem because it gets overshadowed by flashier series when it deserves a spot on every romantasy shelf. Recommended for Divine Rivals readers who want a self-contained rivals-to-lovers with real magic and real heart.

Marie Rutkoski's The Winner's Curse gives Divine Rivals readers the thing they prize most in Iris: a heroine who wins through her mind. Kestrel is a general's daughter in an empire built on conquest, and on impulse she buys a slave named Arin at auction, not knowing he is a spy working from inside her own house to bring her world down.

The two circle each other across a board of music, politics, and rebellion, each hiding what they feel and what they plan, in a slow burn where every conversation doubles as a duel. Rutkoski writes the same doomed-feeling tension that runs under Iris and Roman's letters, two people on opposite sides of a coming war who fall anyway.

Hidden gem because its 2014 release means many newer romantasy readers have never picked it up. Recommended for Divine Rivals fans who love a clever heroine and a love that loyalty keeps pulling apart.

Freya Marske's A Marvellous Light is the cozy-meets-dangerous Edwardian fantasy Divine Rivals readers will adore for its warmth and its slow-warming leads. Robin Blyth stumbles into a government job overseeing a hidden magical society by pure administrative accident, promptly gets cursed by a faceless man, and has to work with Edwin, a buttoned-up magician who would rather be left alone with his books.

Their prickly, opposites-attract partnership blooms into exactly the tender rivalry that makes Iris and Roman ache, one a bruised, bookish introvert and the other a golden-hearted man who sees him clearly. Marske builds a gentle, string-and-cats-cradle magic system and threads it through a real conspiracy with rising stakes.

Hidden gem because it hides on the adult SFF shelf where many romantasy readers never wander. Recommended for Divine Rivals fans who want warmth, wit, and a slow burn steeped in period charm.

Danielle L. Jensen's A Fate Inked in Blood, released February 2024, is the fated, war-soaked romantasy Divine Rivals readers have been waiting for. Freya is a fisherman's wife with a drop of a god's blood in her veins, and when a scheming jarl discovers she is the shield maiden of prophecy, he binds her into his service and to his son Bjorn, a warrior she cannot decide whether to trust or want.

The god-blooded conflict and the slow-building tension between Freya and Bjorn echo the same mortals-caught-in-a-divine-war ache that runs through Iris and Roman's story. Jensen writes the Norse-flavored world with real stakes and a romance that smolders under the threat of a coming reckoning. Released February 2024 and an instant bestseller.

Recommended for Divine Rivals fans who want their yearning wrapped in prophecy, war drums, and the whims of gods.

Hannah Whitten's The Foxglove King, released March 2023, is the darker, court-bound romantasy Divine Rivals readers will reach for when they want the stakes to bite. Lore was born in the catacombs beneath the city and carries a forbidden gift, the power to channel the magic of death itself, which she has spent years hiding as a poison runner.

When the crown discovers what she is, she is forced to spy inside the royal court and pulled into a tense triangle of tension with the golden prince Bastian and the severe monk Gabriel assigned to guard her. The wary, sparking pull between Lore and Bastian carries the same enemies-to-lovers charge that lights up Iris and Roman, sharpened here by mass deaths on the border and a mystery neither one can solve alone.

Released March 2023 and a bestseller. Recommended for Divine Rivals fans who want the same slow-burn heat with a much darker crown of stakes.