Rivals To Lovers
There's nothing hotter than competition... except for love
I’ve written about childhood rivals before… but it’s time to age up this trope! Although technically the last book’s rivalry did start in childhood. Whatever. I love when two characters are pitted at odds with one another because they have a shared goal that only one can achieve. Because even as they fall in love, if only one can come out on top but both are defined by this ambition… how can they possibly come out together on the other side?
What Is Love? by Jen Comfort. This was a five star read for me last year. It’s an absolute delight of a book that hurt me as much as it made me cackle out loud. Rare is the contemporary romance these days that actually makes me chuckle, let alone full-belly laugh in real life, but Jen Comfort was On One for this book and I’m so glad to live in a world where I could read it.
Our rivals are two “Answers!” (a legally distinct fake trivia game show that bears a striking resemblance to Jeopardy) contestants with previous wins under their belts who are put in each others’ paths during a special run made up of all previous favorite winners of the show. Maxine Hart is a bisexual ADHD self-taught savant of trivia, who understands the game mechanics and needs the promised prize money because she comes from a disadvantaged, high-school-dropout background. Teddy Ferguson is a staid college professor who comes from money and has the academic chops but none of the showmanship or game-level strategy of the charismatic, maddening Maxine.
They’re adversaries, certainly, but soon they have a shared enemy as well as goal: the undefeated champion Hercules McKnight, who might not be entirely honest about all his wins and who they must conquer to duke it out themselves. So they decide to team up to study; Maxine teaches Teddy game (in more way than one… though he maybe doesn’t need as much help in one area as she might expect) while Teddy helps fill in the gaps of Maxine’s education (getting hyper focused on a lot due to her ADHD but not comprehensively knowledgeable about things that don’t interest her).
It’s hot, it’s nerdy, it’s sweet, it’s funny, it’s everything.
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥🔥
Great Big Beautiful Life by Emily Henry. A quieter kind of rivalry is explored in Emily Henry’s latest (at time of writing) book, about two writers who are competing for the same mysterious woman’s biographer position. They each have one month of listening to her stories a little at a time, and aren’t allowed to discuss them with each other or anyone else due to ironclad NDAs, while stuck on a tiny Florida (I think) island together. What could go wrong?!
Alice Scott and Hayden Anderson are our writers, with their own personal and career motives for wanting this gig, and their slow burn friendship and romantic entanglement is as complicated as the story they’re getting drips of at a time. It’s a book about writing and writers, and also about how the same story looks different depending on the author. People contain multitudes, etc etc. Do you need more context than that? It’s a small town Emily Henry book about two writers competing for the same job! Get outta here!
I always think it’s cool when the story is about getting someone else’s story, with a meta-narrative about the narrative being built. It’s why I fell so hard for The Secret History of the Pink Carnation by Lauren Willig; sure, I loved the spy stuff and the romance, but I also really dug that it was about a historian with her own shit going on who was investigating the historical aspects and we were learning the story of that along with her.
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Beast in Shining Armor by Cassandra Gannon. This series really took me by surprise. The worldbuilding makes almost no sense, though that’s partially the point, and it’s a kind of dark twist on “what if every fairy tale/Disney movie/deific pantheon was real, they all lived in a pesudo-fantasy realm, and there was a way to measure if people were Good or Bad and then they oppressed each other over it.” This is book 2, but you should honestly read them in order because they’re actually delightful and funny and also there’s a decent amount of plot that carries over between books that’s more satisfying if you can track where we are.
This is our, obviously, Beauty and the Beast retelling, though the Beast (aka Avenant) is also kind of a Gaston mashup in some ways. He’s like a parody of a nasty little princeling, like a slightly evil-er version of Chris Pine’s character from Into The Woods in that he’s very overdramatic and self-centered but also fun about it. He and Belle (she’s still called Belle, obviously) were in school together and due to his Tragic Backstory, her attempts to be friends were rebuffed so strongly that she was like “well if we can’t be pals, let’s destroy each other” and we love this for her. Before the start of this book, prior to Avenant’s imprisonment within and subsequent escape from the psych ward/prison for Bad People (a legal distinction) (yes, I said psych ward/prison- read book 1) we learn Belle did a coup against Avenant and is currently the leader of their hometown. He’s furious… but also a little horny about it.
Then there’s some competition that forces them and other interested creatures to go do a deadly labyrinth adventure… I don’t 10000% remember why. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that this is a weirdly poignant book that’s stupid in all the best/most fun ways about identity and self-perception and the power of caring for other people and letting them care for you in return. I legit cried twice while reading. It’s so ridiculous yet so good. I read the whole series in one weekend and it was a GREAT weekend, let me tell you.
How hot? 🔥🔥🔥
Next time, I’ll be recommending more marriage of convenience books, one of my all-time favorite tropes!
What should I be reading next? Let me know in the comments!
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Love the Jen comfort rep