The Wretched Divine: A Guest Post from Adalyn Grace

In a war-ravaged kingdom, a knight is destined to destroy the demons and restore peace, but when Aurelie forms a forbidden bond with one, everything changes. High-stakes intrigue and enemies-to-lovers tension collide in this sweeping tale of good versus evil. Read on for an exclusive essay from Adalyn Grace about writing The Wretched Divine. 

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Since my days of roleplaying on Neopets when I was twelve years old, I’ve loved writing stories about angels and demons.

At that age, their appeal was simple: they had wings, were super magical, and I always made them extraordinarily attractive and deeply misunderstood. Which, to a fantasy-obsessed tween, was catnip.

Those stories were fun as I grew up, but as I kept writing and ultimately grew to tell stories for a living, I began thinking about demons and angels differently. I became much more interested in the ideas we attach to them, particularly the assumption that one must be inherently good while the other must be inherently evil. The more I thought about that divide, the more interested I became in the idea of inherited beliefs and everything we’re taught before we’re old enough to question it. I started to wonder: what if the beings someone had been raised to worship weren’t as good as they’d been led to believe? And what if the ones they’d been taught to fear weren’t quite as monstrous? 

Those questions eventually became the foundation of The Wretched Divine, an epic fantasy about a mortal knight who has spent her entire life believing angels are holy and demons are monsters. When she’s forced to work alongside both a battle-worn angel and a demon bard who may be the key to ending an age-long war, however, everything she’s been taught about good and evil begins to unravel.

This was by far the most challenging book I’ve ever written. I’m usually a huge outliner, but no matter what I tried, the story and characters refused to behave. I rewrote the first 60,000 words six times before I truly understood the characters and what the plot needed. There were many moments when the book genuinely felt smarter than I was, which is deeply humbling when you’re supposed to be the one in charge.

There were weeks when I was convinced I would never finish writing it. It kicked my butt in every imaginable way, and yet it’s far and away my favorite thing I’ve ever written. I’m thrilled to finally be sharing it, and not with just one beautiful edition in the US, but two! We have the standard 'Demon' Edition featuring metallic red edges, gold winged endpapers, and a red X colorway. Then there’s the stunning signed B&N Exclusive 'Angel' Edition, which features an alternate jacket colorway, the prettiest gilded edges I’ve ever seen, an alternate endpaper colorway, and a deleted chapter from an early draft.

I especially love that the B&N Exclusive Edition gets to bring back something that otherwise would have vanished during all those rewrites. For a story that took so many different paths before becoming what it is now, it feels very fitting to let readers glimpse one of the roads not taken.