If you have lately finished Divine Rivals and find yourself wandering through your days as one who has misplaced something precious—as though a friend has departed on a journey without leaving a forwarding address—then do take heart. For though Iris and Roman’s story may have reached its final flourish upon the page, there exist other worlds awaiting your discovery, other pen pals whose letters shall make your heart flutter most unexpectedly.
Here, dear reader, you shall find the very finest books to console your Divine Rivals-shaped longing.
The Undertaking of Hart and Mercy by Megan Bannen
If it was the letters that captured you—those missives exchanged between souls who scarce knew they were falling in love—then this delightful tale shall suit you admirably. Hart is a marshal who patrols the strange, wild lands of Tanria, hunting the reanimated dead, whilst Mercy runs a funeral parlor with considerably less patience than she possesses skill.
They cannot abide one another. Not one bit.
And yet, when Hart begins writing letters addressed simply to “A Friend,” and when a reply mysteriously appears in return, something magical unfolds. The anonymous correspondent who makes his heart sing turns out to be—oh, but you have guessed it already, haven’t you? One reviewer described it as “‘You’ve Got Mail,’ but with a talking bunny,” which captures the experience perfectly.
What the River Knows by Isabel Ibañez
Here is a particular treasure: this book and Divine Rivals were written at the very same time by authors who critiqued one another’s pages. They are dedicated to each other, like literary sisters separated at birth.
Inez Olivera inherits a fortune and a mystery when her parents perish in Egypt. Armed with nothing but her sketch pads and a golden ring pulsing with ancient magic, she sails to Cairo, where she discovers that the truth of her parents’ disappearance is far darker than anyone admitted. The infuriatingly handsome assistant who thwarts her at every turn? He becomes rather more important than Inez might prefer.
This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone
Now, for those who found the letter-writing of Divine Rivals to be the very heart of its enchantment, we present one of the most exquisitely crafted epistolary romances ever committed to paper.
Red and Blue are agents on opposite sides of a war that spans all of time itself. They leave each other messages hidden in impossible places: in the rings of trees, in the patterns of tea leaves, in the very fabric of dying civilizations. What begins as bold taunting transforms over time into something quite a bit more interesting, indeed.
This slim volume won the Hugo, Nebula, and Locus awards, and reading it feels very much like holding starlight in your hands. The prose is poetry, and the love story shall quite undo you.
The Bridge Kingdom by Danielle L. Jensen
Lara has spent fifteen years training for one purpose: marry the king of Ithicana, infiltrate his impenetrable kingdom, and bring it to utter ruin. She is an assassin bride, sent under the guise of peace to destroy everything her husband holds dear.
What she does not anticipate is that Aren, her enemy-husband, might be rather more complex than the monster she was taught to hate. As her feelings transform from frosty hostility to fierce passion, Lara must choose which kingdom to save—and which to destroy.
The enemies-to-lovers tension here could set kindling aflame from across the room, and the arranged marriage trope is executed with devastating precision.
Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli
What if the witch you are hunting is also the woman you are falling in love with? And what if the witch hunter pursuing you is also the gentleman making your pulse race most inconveniently?
Rune is a witch vigilante called the Crimson Moth, rescuing her kind from persecution by night whilst playing the vapid socialite by day. When she decides to court the notorious witch hunter Gideon Sharpe to throw him off her scent, she finds herself rather more entangled than she intended. He, meanwhile, suspects her ships are smuggling witches and decides to court her right back.
It is a cat-and-mouse game in which neither hunter nor prey is quite what they seem, filled with the same tension and forbidden longing that made Divine Rivals so impossible to set down.
The Cruel Prince by Holly Black
Jude was seven years old when her parents were murdered and she was stolen away to live in the treacherous High Court of Faerie. Ten years later, she wants nothing more than to belong to this dangerous, glittering world—despite being mortal in a realm that despises mortals.
The wickedest of her tormentors is Prince Cardan, cruel and beautiful and absolutely maddening. What unfolds between them is not merely enemies-to-lovers but a hate-love entanglement woven through with political intrigue, betrayal, and twists that shall leave you gasping.
Holly Black is the acknowledged queen of faerie literature, and this series proves precisely why.
Emily Wilde’s Encyclopaedia of Faeries by Heather Fawcett
For readers who savored the academic rivalry woven through Divine Rivals, here is a treat most satisfying. Emily Wilde is Cambridge’s foremost expert on faeries: brilliant, meticulous, and absolutely hopeless with people. She prefers the company of her books and her dog to any human conversation.
When her infuriatingly charming academic rival Wendell Bambleby follows her to a remote Scandinavian village, she finds her research—and her carefully ordered heart—thrown into delightful chaos. The story unfolds through Emily’s journal entries, and the slow-burn romance between these opposites is as cozy as a fireside in winter.
But Wendell Bambleby has secrets, and uncovering them shall require Emily to solve the greatest mystery of all.
These Violent Delights by Chloe Gong
Romeo and Juliet, reimagined in the dazzling, dangerous Shanghai of 1926, where blood feuds between rival gangs run the streets red and a monster lurks in the depths of the Huangpu River.
Juliette Cai, heir to the Scarlet Gang, once loved Roma Montagov of the rival White Flowers—until he betrayed her. Now, as something ancient and terrible emerges to prey upon their city, these former lovers must set aside their guns and their grudges to save the world they both wish to rule.
The New York Times called it “a deliciously dark twist” on the classic tale, and indeed, the Bard himself would surely approve of this glittering, violent, heartbreaking retelling.
When the Moon Hatched by Sarah A. Parker
For those who wish to lose themselves entirely in sprawling fantasy—who loved the world-building and high stakes of Divine Rivals—this epic romance delivers dragons, elemental magic, and a love that blazes across ages.
Raeve is an assassin with a tragic, mysterious past. Kaan is a king who earned his crown through bloodshed and carries grief like a second skin. When their paths cross, neither suspects that fate has entwined them long before this meeting—nor what their connection shall demand of them both.
The world-building here is lush and original: when dragons die, they drift skyward to become moons, and when those moons fall, devastation follows. It is fantasy romantasy at its most ambitious.
A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas
Perhaps no list of fantasy romance would be complete without the book that launched a thousand reading obsessions. When huntress Feyre kills a wolf in the woods, a terrifying faerie lord drags her to his magical realm to pay the debt. What begins as imprisonment transforms into something Feyre never expected—fierce passion with Tamlin, her captor, even as an ancient darkness threatens to consume them both.
This Beauty and the Beast retelling sparked the modern romantasy renaissance, and if you have somehow not yet experienced it, now is the moment. The series grows only more complex and consuming with each installment.
Finding Your Next Adventure
Each of these tales shares something essential with Divine Rivals: the exquisite tension of enemies or rivals discovering that the heart wants what logic forbids, the magic of words exchanged across impossible distances, the ache of love blooming in the most inhospitable circumstances.
Whether you crave letters passed in secret, enemies who cannot stop thinking of one another, or sprawling fantasy worlds where love must be fought for—your next favorite book awaits within these pages. Now go forth, dear reader, and fall in love all over again.
