Divine Rival and Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross, 777 pages.
Iris Winnow and Roman Kitt are from two different worlds, even though they grew up in the same city. To Iris the newspaper columnist position they are competing for would mean everything for her ability to take care of her struggling family. For Roman it's a matter of desperately trying to earn his rich father's approval. But when they start magically exchanging magical letters they soon begin to fall in love with the person on the other sides of the letters, with whom they can be more genuinely themselves than with anyone else.
But long-buried gods have woken and the country is plunged into war, a war that they can't stay away from even as the city of Oath tries its best to pretend it doesn't effect them. The two get pulled deeper into the heartbreak and terror of the divine war as they desperately hope for some sort of peaceful future together.
These books flowed so easily into one another that it felt best to give them a single review. I was really impressed by the prose of these books. It's always a bit of a danger telling the reader that your characters are excellent writers, especially when you let the audience read examples, but in this case I absolutely felt the love of language throughout. I also found books ones and two to be delightfully mirrored in a way that added depth to both (in a rare case where I like the sequel slightly better than the original. On a more personal note, rivals-to-lovers is one of my preferred relationship dynamics, and I found myself very bought into the central romance of the series, and I was cheering for them the whole time. I was a little surprised with just how much I enjoyed these books, and with how quickly I devoured them.
