Rebecca Ross Has a Secret She's Been Keeping Since 2023 — and A Bittersweet Spell Is Finally Here 💌✨

💌 Hello, lovely reader 

Rebecca Ross — the author whose Divine Rivals made so many of us cry quietly into our pages and whose lyrical prose has become one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary fantasy — has been sitting on a secret since 2023.

Three years. In publishing time, that's practically a lifetime. In reader time, that's approximately one thousand moments of wondering what she was working on next.

Now, at last, she's told us. And it is beautiful.

✨ Introducing A Bittersweet Spell

On March 13, 2026, Rebecca Ross officially announced that she has sold an adult fantasy trilogy to HarperVoyager — and the first book is called A Bittersweet Spell. 

The most succinct way she described it? "A magical antiquarian is blackmailed into transcribing a cursed manuscript, but to do so he must enlist the brilliant mage he once betrayed, forcing them to confront their shared past as they uncover the book's secrets." 

Read that again. A cursed manuscript. A betrayal. Two people being forced back together by circumstances that refuse to let the past stay buried. A slow burn with a decade of history behind it.

We are already not okay.

📖 A Story-Within-a-Story — and a Romance Worth the Wait

Rebecca described A Bittersweet Spell as "a book made of intricate layers — a narrative to challenge and grow me as an author." It's a story-within-a-story, which made for a unique drafting experience that had her simultaneously filling journal pages with wild ideas and occasionally left her wonderfully perplexed.

It took her almost an entire year to draft, and she shared that by the time she wrote the last sentence, it had completely stolen her breath. 

And for readers who love slow-burn romance with real emotional weight — she has already shared a teaser line that tells you everything about the tone of this book:

"She was beautiful in a wistful way, like a poem that had been torn away from its binding, and Lorne might have been chiseled down by the past decade, but it had done the same to her."

The romance features characters in their mid-30s who haven't seen each other in ten years — a second-chance romance that she described as "a delight to write," with heaps of yearning and a wonderfully slow burn. 

This is the kind of sentence — and the kind of love story — that Rebecca Ross does better than almost anyone.

🌿 A New Chapter for a Beloved Author

This announcement marks something genuinely significant for Rebecca Ross as a writer. She is known and loved for her YA fantasy — Divine Rivals, Ruthless Vows, A River Enchanted — but A Bittersweet Spell is her first adult fantasy trilogy, and it represents a deliberate step toward more layered, more complex storytelling.

She has already outlined books 2 and 3 and will very soon begin drafting the second book in the trilogy — her first time writing a series of this length, which she described as being "both ecstatic and intimidated in the best of ways." 

That feeling — the beautiful, slightly terrifying excitement of reaching for something bigger — comes through in every word of her announcement. And for readers who have followed her career, it feels like watching an author arrive at exactly the story she was always building toward.

🗓️ When Can We Read It?

A Bittersweet Spell is currently slated for a Spring 2027 release in both the US and the UK.  A cover reveal, official synopsis, and pre-order links are all still to come — and knowing Rebecca Ross's fandom, those announcements are going to be events in themselves.

In the meantime, if you haven't yet read Divine Rivals — the epistolary romance between two rival journalists writing magical letters to each other across a war between gods — consider this your most urgent reading recommendation. It is the perfect introduction to Rebecca Ross's world before A Bittersweet Spell arrives.

💙 For the Readers Who Already Love Her Words

Our Divine Rivals collection was created for readers who believe in the kind of love that survives the impossible — the kind that writes letters across impossible distances and refuses to give up. If A Bittersweet Spell sounds like the next chapter of that feeling, our collection is a beautiful place to live in the waiting.

Spring 2027. Mark it. We'll be counting down together. 💌