Boozy Bookgasms - May the Best Ghoul Win

Episode Date: March 18, 2026

Phantasma by Kaylie Smith Today the cousins are entering the dark, deadly, and frankly very sexy world of Phantasma, the gothic competition where contestants must survive a series of terrifying trials inside a cursed castle. Think haunted house meets Hunger Games, with just enough brooding men to make everyone question their survival priorities. So pour yourself something strong, light a candle that probably shouldn’t be flickering like that, and laugh along with Kim, Jen and Lynn!

Shit, I had cocktails last night. I had cocktails on Saturday. I had cocktails on Friday. I drink at brunch. I drank at the airport. I drank when I got to the hotel. I drank everywhere I was this weekend. I drink everywhere. You're in for some boozy bookgasms today. Join three cousins creating a titillating headspace where steamy romance novels collide with strong cocktails. So sit back, sip slow, and enjoy the ride. Welcome back, Boozy Babes to another episode of Boosy BookGasms. I'm Lynn. I'm Jen. And I'm Kim.

And tonight we are recapping Fantasma by Kaylee Smith, which is basically a hunger games meets a haunted house in hell. Yeah, that's accurate. Curse devils, hot phantoms, and a house that is aggressively trying to kill everyone inside of it. Kim, what are we drinking tonight? Tonight, we're pairing our reed with the gold phantom. Because honestly, anything less would be disrespectful to the amount of freaking drama in this book. So much drama. This drink is not at all subtle.

It's beautifully gold tinted. And it gives off that strong, I shouldn't want this, but I absolutely do energy. We've got some coniac, some honey, some liqueur 43, which I didn't know it came in two different flavors. So we're going to go with the original because it gives that strong vanilla flavor. Some pineapple juice and a little lemon juice and a dash of sea salt on top. It's really a pretty honey tinted color and it's phenomenal. Yum. Enjoy.

What kind of phantom? It's called the gold phantom. The gold phantom. Good stuff. I like it. Cheers everyone. We are starting with Ophelia Grimm. She and her sister and her mother live in New Orleans.

She would love a good book based in New Orleans. Always. But her mother has just died, sadly. She wakes up, she comes downstairs in the morning. Her mother is dead. Very peaceful, just on the ground laying there, like nothing bad happened, which is very questionable. They are necromancers. And so there's no time to grieve.

There are things she has to do in order to pass on this necromancy spirit from her mother. It always goes to the eldest daughter. It's a family gift. Yeah, the gift. Her sister Genevieve is also living in the home and is not, um, obviously the oldest daughter, so she's not going to get any of this gift. And she has been sort of on the outside. So the mom has been training Ophelia over the years. And Genevieve has kind of been left to live her life. But her and her sister are very, very close. And she's totally freaked out. And

Ophelia is kind of beaten down by the whole thing. Like, she's very stressed about having to take this on. She's overwhelmed. Because she's seen her mom deal with this and dead people just coming into her house all the time and live people coming to ask her to meet the dead people. Well, and she has severe OCD. Yeah. Throughout the book that burdens her. I think that adds to her lack of ability to process this. She's just really overwhelmed and stressful.

I think she was so sheltered. Once they figured out that she had powers at all, it was like 100% all the focus on her at all times, practice, practice, practice, while her little sisters running around with her friends and being a social butterfly and having a good time, Ophelia's stuck running chemicals and doing spells and learning how to raise the dead. All these, you know, life gifts that you need to work on as a necromancer. She hears a voice in her head at all times that gives her instructions that she has to follow. But if she doesn't follow them, like usually someone's going to die, often her or someone she loves, right?

So it's like you have to knock three times on the wall or your sister's going to die or you have to get home in the next three minutes or you're going to die. That's her mental demons. And that's a very normal OCD thing. And I don't know if you guys read the author's note, but she has OCD. And she said a lot of these behaviors that she wrote into this character were things that either she had experienced or she had learned about from other people who she had knew that had OCD. So it was really interesting afterwards to read about that because in the book she makes it sound kind of spooky. Like, ooh, it's a spooky evil voice. Well, like she's like in like a poltergeist.

Like someone's like in her body or something. Yeah. But really, this is a very common issue for people that have OCD. We joke around about it all the time. Like, oh, my God. Like, we have relatives that you can't leave a coffee cup on the countertop. Even if your coffee's in it, you set it down, you turn around, you come back. It's gone.

You know, it's washed. It's already put away in the cabinet. Not in my house. Well, I have one of those. We know people. Oh, you have one now, Lindsay. And so we joke about it, but I do think this is part of it. And we all, I'm sure at some point in our life have some sort of OCD tend to.

Tendencies where we have to get something done and we have to do this three times or it's not going to work. But it was just fascinating to me how she painted this picture that it's like a little devil on your shoulder going, you have to, you have to, you have to, you have to. Or something bad's going to happen and like threatens her. Or if you have a bad thought and, you know, a lot of us have like, oh my God, that person's such a jerk. I could just kill that person. It's just one of those thoughts that comes in your brain and we immediately back out of that and go, you don't mean that.

You're upset. Right. Well, in her case, it just keeps replay. It's like you should kill them. You should kill them. Do it now. It came in a lot, too, about herself. Everybody's embarrassed by you.

Embarrassed, embarrassed, embarrassed. Why would he look twice at you? Really just takes her down. It's a self-confidence beat down. There is a part in here that is so eloquently done where she has this nightmare of being puppeteered by her demons, this voice. Shadow voice. You think about that and you go, that makes sense.

When all your fears, all your anxieties control all of your movements, how all awful, but the imagery of it was fabulous. The writing was really good. I did feel like I could be in and see every place that she was in. The way she described it was really good. So as part of this transition with her mother, there's also this locket. So this locket has been passed down from Grimm all the way through, and it's a very important piece. And so she immediately puts it on herself and she feels it warm. So this locket will kind of guide her in some ways throughout the book. And you don't really understand. understand why until the very end. And her mother tells her you can never take it off. You can never give it away. Once it's on, it's on. Don't remove it. Period. She is still struggling with the idea that she's

going to be like the necromancer in town. Her and her sister go to bury their mother. And right afterwards, the bank shows up and says, oh, actually, we're about to own your home because your mom took out a loan against the house. You owe us $35,000. We're going to foreclose in 30 days. Best get to pack in. Motherfuckus. It's really awful. And Ophelia is like very much struggling. realizes that Genevieve, her younger sister actually knew all along what was happening and hit it from her and even made some of the payments for her mom. But they don't know why the mom took out the loan. They know they're going to have to leave their house and this is very upsetting. And Genevieve says, great, this is like the best thing ever happened to us. Let's get out of this town. Let's go travel

the world. You don't have to be the necromancer in New Orleans. But she feels this deep-seeded obligation to carry on the family name. And there's some words between Aphelia and Genevieve, like all sisters and tense moments. But Aphelia really hurt. Genevieve's feelings and Ophelia says, I always have to clean up your messes. I'll have to clean up this one too. And Genevieve runs away. Ophelia felt left out because she doesn't know what's going on. Why did you know this thing was happening and you didn't tell me? It was obviously very tense. I think they tiptoe around her because of the OCD or because of her high anxiety. Yeah, I agree. So Genevieve runs away. Ophelia has to make her way home. I don't even know what time period this is. I think they're purposely vague on this.

I was going to ask you guys if this was Regency Romance because they were wearing corsets and big skirts. I think so. The carriages. The way that they talked was very modern day. And that is a giant irritation for me because I'm like if it's Regency, let's talk regency. If it's modern day, let's dress modern day. I felt like there was a miss there. That was a little bit of a gap for me. They were very vague about it. It didn't bother me. I didn't catch the wording. Oh, I did. So Ophelia is going home and she sees some people that she had seen her sister with before, kind of hanging out in a bar and she hears people talking about this thing called Fantasma. We realize that this is a mystical hunger games type situation run by the devils. And the devils move this hunger games from city to city.

And it's showing up in New Orleans. It's a pop up. It's a pop up. It's a pop-up. It's a pop-up, haunted house hunger game situation. And it's going to start the next day. You enter into this contest. And the idea is that if you get out on the other side, you're going to win whatever your heart's desire. But you could very much die at any time during this game. So she's like, this is stupid. But as she's walking by, she realizes phantasmus popped up into this cemetery. And there's a voice coming from the void. And her mom always said, don't look for devils. Don't look them in the eye. Her mom was very anti-devil. But she's kind of drawn into this voice. They get to talking. She says, are you stuck here? And he says, yes, but it's not your problem. She does ask how she can help him. Which is nice. She's a giver. He says, I need to find a heart and key. She's like, well, how can I help you? And he's like, you can't. He's like, just hope you never see me. So she goes back to her house to look for her sister and the sister's not there. And she's really freaked out by it. She wakes in this morning. Sister's still not there. She starts digging through her stuff and realizes her sister has been researching phantasm for years. Knows that it's coming. And then she finds this name Gabriel in her sister's diary. She thinks that she's

gone to Fantasma so that she can win and get their house paid for. That's what's going through Aphalia's mind. And she can't believe her sister would do this. She packs a bag and like races over to Fantasma to enter herself so that she can find her sister. It's very sweet. This is like the hunger games with zero skill set. She's going to run over there and save her and get her out of it. I think she thinks she's going to get there before she enters. Yeah. But as she's walking up to Fantasma, she hears follow your heart. We think from the locket. She tries to find the sister in the crowd. She asked about Gabriel. As soon as these devils hear Gabriel, their eyes twitched. So she feels like they know something, but they won't give her any information about her sister. They say, like,

we cannot give you any information on any contestants. You either enter or you don't. Good luck to you. So she says she's going to enter, and they read her all the rules, and they say fall in love and phantasmat at your own risk. They ask her name, which she gives, which apparently is the whole thing with devils, like you don't want to give them your name. So she finally gets in and an apparition approaches her. Kim was telling us, in the front of this book, they give you the whole list of all of the various paranormal creatures to know which one is more important than the other. I did not know this going in. But there's an apparition, which Kim, where on the hierarchy does the apparition fall? In the hierarchy of important magical creatures, I feel like it's low.

An apparition is second to the bottom. Second to the bottom. It goes ghouls, then apparitions, then polter guys, then phantoms. The price to get in this is to give them your biggest fear. Oh, yes, you're right. So they had to share their biggest fear, which will come back to haunt her, literally and figuratively. Later. They dig through her mind. They say something like, how do you sleep at night with all of these fears? Because of her extreme anxiety.

She's scared of everything. Yeah. And then they still found her biggest fear, but we don't know what it was. We know that she has one. Right. I don't divulge that. So she finds this apparition. And if this doesn't give you any clue of what we're going to go through in this

castle, the apparition is basically gutted from throat to groin with all of their guts It's just like falling out of their apparition-y body, trailing along. And she, you know, kind of can barely hold it down. And the apparition says, oh, you're only one of five who hasn't fainted or thrown up. And she's like, well, I'm just barely. The apparition tells her where to go and where her group is. Now, she doesn't find her sister. Her sister is in a completely different group, we think.

We don't even know if she went there. Her sister might have high-tailed it to, you know, Baton Rouge or something. She might have hooked up last night. We don't know. Big town. Big town. A lot of tourists. No one will tell her where her sister is.

So she's in this group, 30-ish people. They're in their own wing. They're told you can't leave your section of the house until the seventh level. So there's one level a night. There's nine levels. Devils have nine layers of hell or. They'll have like a theme night. Nine trials that they have to go through.

Yeah, a theme night. Party. Love a good theme night. Morbidly true. Except all of these themes suck. So she meets a couple of the people in her group, Kade, who is an. immediate enemy. He's like, asshole, the worst. He's got kind of a little cadre of douchebags. Eric,

Bo, a couple others. There's Lucy, who as we find out later, is actually friends with her sister, Genevieve, Cady and Lucy are cousins. What we find out is all of this cast of characters are there for a not good reason. A family member died and they're trying to bring them back. Their families hit hard times money-wise. They're probably going to ask for a ton of money at the end of it, but they're all down on their luck. No one's doing this for giggles. And they all have something. to get at the end that's like motivating them. They're all desperate. Yeah.

So she gives a sign to her room. She just knows it's going to be creepy and she says it's actually quite charming. She's this like lovely room. She's expecting guts everywhere and she walks and she's like, oh, it's lovely. But as she's kind of getting settled, a bookcase in her room moves and this ghost cat, like the white cat shows up in a room. But she says it has human-like eyes. But it leads her to this hidden door and her locket is pushing her forward and saying you

should go do that. So this locket will really be her guide throughout the whole book. As soon as she gets through the bookcase, a red-eyed figure appears. And so she has to basically run. She ends up in some sort of broom closet trying to get away from this red-eyed monster. A new door appears. And then she falls through like a black hole and lots of whispers around her and falls through the ceiling and lands on a couch in a dining hall. And who's there? But this hot, attractive guy with white hair. And and green eyes. He's very corporal, but she feels like he's a ghost. And he asks her, like, where the hell did you come from? She tells him, I fell through this portal. And he's kind of freaked out. He's like, oh, it was the whispering gate. You shouldn't have found that. And she's like, well, I don't

know what to tell you. Like, I fell into that thing. And now I'm here. So she tries to talk to him. And he says, even the walls have eyes and ears. Yeah, he's like, shut up. Stop talking. Stop talking. But he starts calling her angel. So she's now got a nickname. And we know he's main male character. It's the same guy she met days before. And he called her Angel on the street, too, when they had that mind conversation. Well, and she's pissed, right? Because she says, well, you don't remember me. And he's like, what are you talking about?

Because he doesn't remember a word of their conversation the first night. Did we meet before? And she's mad that he doesn't remember. And here's one other issue. And I'm not going to drag this book because I didn't think it was a terrible book, but this was another gap for me. I didn't think it sucked all. But I also.

But I also felt like the first few chapters of this book we're hearing about this meek, high anxiety, very sheltered girl that barely leaves the house. She's scared of her shadow. You've got this picture of this girl. She gets to this haunted mansion. That's probably the most terrifying thing she's ever going to do in our entire life. And she has attitude. She's a totally different personality. She's snapping at him.

She's sassy. She's edgy. See, I didn't get that she was. Meek and mild. I got that she had high anxiety, but I didn't get that she was scared to leave the house. She didn't have any friends. I got that her mom just kept pushing to her. She was sheltered.

She didn't have friends. She was scared to stay out after dark. Sheltered, but not meek. She was fighting back. I guess I didn't see her sassy personality until she meets this guy. And I'm like, where did that come from? I got sass from get-go with this family. She definitely had her issues.

I never thought of her as meek so much as like resigns. But she tells this dude about her sister. She asks, do you know Genevieve? Have you seen her? Here's what she looks like. Do you know what Gabriel? When she says, Gabriel, again, his eyes react. But he doesn't tell her anything.

He offers, you know what, let me help you. He introduces himself as Blackwell. So we will call him Blackwell throughout the rest of the book. And he says, you're exactly what I've been waiting for. And he proposes a bargain. He says, if you make a blood bargain with me, he will help her win the competition and find her sister. but you have to help me find what I'm looking for, which is this heart and key. The end of the blood bargain, if she doesn't help him find the heart and key, she will give him 10 years of her life.

And that's how he survives is on these bargains. And she agrees. I mean, options. Right. They were limited. It's worth it for her. It's a little. Very small grouping.

I don't know where I'm at. I don't know what I'm doing. This guy's hot. I mean, what's 10 years? It's like a bling. I mean, when you're only 20 something, like who cares? Right. Take 30. She definitely thinks he's hot. You don't have dual narration. So you really only have her point of view throughout the whole thing. She did a good job on the audible, though. I thought she was a good narrator.

Agreed. I agree. So the first circle of hell is limbo. So she has to do these every single night. And the idea is they're the last living competitor at the end. Now, you can forfeit in between levels. But once you go into the trial, you cannot forfeit. But you can make a deal with a devil. Yeah, I was really surprised how many people did that. I wasn't. It was that or death. Yeah, me being still. I do. I don't know. Before she went into this level, her and Cade have a couple of interactions, and he just like immediately hates her. So they go into this first circle of limbo and it's a maze, but there's no sense of touch. You can only see. But she does have magic. She has to get to the center of the maze. and she starts marking the walls with her magic.

She finally gets to the center of the maze after a couple of close calls, and Cade and his friend get to the center at the same time, but there's a hellhound blocking the door. And the idea of the hellhound is if you wake it up, it's game over. So Kate has no problems. He wakes the sucker up, goes through the door, all good. And she then has to deal with this hellhound. They're all fucked.

Shocker. Her and another guy have to run, run, run, run around. Blackwell appears. urges her to fight back, but she does finally get to the door. So now we're into level two, lust. I think there's something like 20 contestants left. A bunch died and a couple other things happened. Yeah.

At some point, Cade basically accuses her of not being like a mortal. He went after her with a knife. She became see-through. Yeah. Her arm disappeared. He stabbed and then her arm was transparent. And he's like, she's one of them. She's a diamond.

He's a big redneck idiot, just kind of. of a pig. And he hates her after that because he thinks she's cheating. He tries to convince the rest of their cohort. At some point, he punches her in the face and she bleeds actual red blood, which convinces everyone else that she's immortal. She's human. Yeah. But he still hates her guts. But at least the rest of the group isn't like out to get her to. So we go into the next level, lust. The lust trial is basically like an orgy. You're often some sort of drink, a different colors. They're in a mirror-filled room with a bunch of beds and a bunch of people having sex on them. So she drinks the red drink.

Would you call it an ecstasy high? Like she starts not really remembering why she's there, touching herself. It's like Molly. Yeah. They're just very touchy-feely. Everything sounds good. She's agreeable to everything. Kind of a devil, maybe a vampire, like comes on to her.

I think vampires. She's really into it. And then all of a sudden, Blackwell shows up and says, no, no, don't. don't do that. Wouldn't you rather come with me? And she's like, yeah, of course I would. He is trying to seduce her, but she realizes he's not saying things exactly the way she thinks he should. He's calling her sweetheart instead of angel. Darling. It triggers her. And she's like, that's weird. Wait a minute. So she realizes he is an imposter. She says his name three times he will appear. Beetle juice. Beetle juice. It's like beetlese. So she said his name a couple times in lust. And the real Blackwell, please stand Shows up, gets rid of the imposter, but because she chose red, it's the blood lust. She has to drink someone's blood and they have to drink her blood in order for her to be free of this level. So they exchanged blood. And then they find the door under the bed and they finally get back into the dining room, which is where this all starts and stops.

Blackwell's definitely teasing her about that and saying like, oh, but you wanted to kiss me. And you, well, you did kiss my imposter. But he also notices that she has a split lip and he makes her tell him. why and she finally said Cade and then he just disappears, obviously to go find Cade. He's charming. He's charming. I was just thinking that. So she still has this bargain that she's made with Blackwell. And part of it is that she helps him find this heart and key. So in between all of the daily horrors. And by the way, the daily horrors aren't just on the levels. Yeah, they're everywhere. It's crazy. Like, it's literally a house of horse. So she's trying to find the Spartan key. She finally finds a hidden button in the library

on one of the shelves. And the shelf does one of those creepy where it just turns around. Like Scooby-Doo. Burr. So she calls Blackwell. Blackwell, Blackwell, he shows up. He's like, what the hell are you doing in here? But it took him too long to get there. And she asked why. And he says, oh, well, my magic has been diminished because I went to beat up Kade because he hurt you. So, oops. I can't do anything. Sorry.

But they end up in this, like, puzzle room where they find all of these. bricks that have a one, two, three, four, five. They have to hit them in the order. They figure that out. It's like Simon says. What was that game? Yeah. You had to hit everything in order? That's not same. Oh, I don't. Beepoo pop, poop, poop. That's not what I remember. All right, fine. Children of the 80s, you know. Oh, sorry. I'm not that old. When they hit all of the bricks, there's a little piety hole that shows up. Oh, boy. Nope, not ideal. Lizzie. Not ideal. I think is.

You got to work on you use of the word Heidi. And hole, apparently. Just because it's hidden doesn't mean it's a Heidi hole. Okay, okay. I'll look it up. That's the one's in the bathroom. There's a tunnel that appears at the bottom of the wall. And at the same time, acid starts falling down from the ceiling.

Yeah, that's unfortunate. That sucked. They rush into this tunnel. But Blackwell is really worried about Aphelia getting burned. Like it'll burn through her clothes. So he just takes them all off of her. Helpful. Yeah.

She only has so many clothes. It's a good reason. They do start making out. But he stops her and tells her she really would have lost that lust trial if he had been the actual person in the trial. And then she's mad. He definitely taunts her. Pretty much the whole book. Yep.

And as they're about to leave, they see a description. It says, something scribbled and forever, Gabriel. So Gabriel is the name of the person that was in her sister's diary. So then the next trial is greed. They're all trapped in gilded cages. a thousand feet above a bed of lava. And the idea is that you have to climb through your cage up a wall and find these gold rings that are buried in a mountain. So as soon as she gets kind of close to the top, she sees Cade.

He's hoarded like five rings and she has no rings. But she finally gets a ring and latches it on. He goes falling, woo, and she finally gets to the top. But she's worn out. Her hands are all destroyed. And as soon as she gets to the top, she faints. After this, they have a lot of really hot, sexy moments where they're flirting and he's trying to take care of her. There's some bathroom scenes.

He tells her he wants to taste her sins. But a lot of times their sex is very obnoxiously interrupted. Like every time. Yeah, exactly. Right at the finish. And you're like, dang it. Well, that was good timing. He's usually the one that doesn't get to, you know, finish.

Poor guy. Well, it's not about him. No, no. Absolutely not. That's fair. At some point they are having sex. Chapter 27. Throughout the book there, not only do you have these levels, you have these haunts where basically the devils and the ghouls and the ghosts are trying to like scare the shit out of you so that you give up.

And so at some point, it starts raining blood in the room that they're having sex in. And he goes to stop it. And she's like, no, it's fine. I don't mind it. They do finish the sex that time amidst a rain shower of blood. Like, what's the matter with a little blood? That no one ever. Until this scene, this book felt very.

young adult to me. It felt very hunger games. In the way that Hunger Games is young adult. But then we got to this and I was like, oh, not so young adult. It's a adult adult. It's spiced up in the middle. Yeah. It's a little psycho adult. Yeah. And I think we're only on what night, three or four at this point. Three or four. Yeah, they're falling for each other. It's like three days in. It's Wednesday. It's not a slow burn. It's fast burn. Tump day. She does ask him to stay, but remembers the warning about falling in love. But then she meets this devil named Sinclair. So Sinclair... He's also hot, though.

He is hot. That is clear. Yeah. And she is kind of attracted to him, but knows he's not great. And he tries to kind of lure her into giving up on Blackwell. Like, their little romance is making the rounds amongst the devils. I think Sinclair was watching them in the hallway during a sex scene. Jasper the three-eyed demon knows that there's something going on.

Well, and these guys can go to a different plane level. and watch it like a fucking Netflix episode. They're just like sitting up there and eating the popcorn. Oh, did you see that? Oh, my God. They're gossiping amongst each other. And I thought that was kind of funny. Oh, yeah.

Well, in Blackwell, when he isn't called to help her, is in the alternate reality watching her. So, yeah, he knows what's going on all of the time. When she says, I want to know more about this Gabriel, Blackwell says, I'll make a deal with Jasper to go get the contestant logs. They find many, many, many different Gabriel's. And so Claire, when he finds her, says, you should ask him about page 882. So she knows that Black was keeping something from her.

And he definitely is. So she asked him about it. He admits not only is Gabriel listed, but so is Tessie Grimm. Her mother was in Fantasma, along with a Gabriel White. Now, this part I saw. Damn. Did you? I didn't see the mom.

Mom being in Fantasma? Yeah, I did. No, I didn't see it. Oh, yeah. She kept saying, steer clear. What does it say you protest too much? Mm-hmm. Doth protest two months. There are a billion more trials.

A billion. Well, there's nine total. There's nine. We've been through, what, three? Minus a billion. I don't know mathematician, but it's probably six more. There are a bunch more that we go through. In between all of these trials, she's also learning about Gabriel, her mother.

Tessie Grimm was in the games with Gabriel, and they fell in love. and they got cursed. And Tessie's curse was to become apathetic to Gabriel, and Gabriel's curse was to become overly infatuated with her. Stalker. They couldn't ever be on the same page, but they conceived Ophelia while in Fantaspa. And I guess they were still together for a couple of years because they also conceived Genevieve, which was, yeah, right after had Genevieve.

Tessie went to a devil named Andrea to help create a curse that would make Gabriel forget about them. But that curse were off because the phantasma curse, I guess, was stronger. It was a magical restraining order. I'm not feeling a magical restraining order, exactly. But we realized that Gabriel was in a more recent trial. He went to Fantasma twice and most recently. Her dad went back to the trials to win and get the memories back.

The curse is removed so he could be with her because he still loved her. Mm-hmm. But he didn't win. No. Neither of them made it. He lost. They bought it. Well, yeah, though we find that out. Blancel is trying to push her away because he can feel that she's falling in love with him and he doesn't want her to be hurt. He says that they should just stay business partners, which obviously

really offends her. There's a lot of cat and mouse because she pushes him away. Then she, he pushes her. Third act. Yeah. Second act. All the break-up. There is a situation where Sinclair tries to trick her when she's mad at Blackwell and says, I can give you whatever you want. What's a silly fantasy? And she said, I want to go to a ball and have lots of suitors. This was very labyrinth to me. It was kind of bizarre. But that's why I was labyrinth to me. Remember the movie? Oh, yeah, what David Bowler? You remind me of the babe. What babe? Yeah. That one. She's in there and she does the same thing. He puts her in this beautiful ball gown and she's everything's glittery and they're giving her things. That's kind of how I saw this whole scenario playing out where she's dancing in the ballroom. Her night gown turns. to this beautiful red dress and very Cinderella-esque and creepy a.A.F.

It's meant to run out the clock, right? Yeah. So, like, she's in this sort of alternate universe. And Blackwell can't get to her because Sinclair's magic is stronger than his. He does finally find her. He's able to break through that. And she's exhausted. She's been dancing for hours in this false reality.

And she's to still go and do one of the trials. Sinclair does corner her in a hallway. And she basically is like, well, why can't I kiss this other dude? And she does kiss Sinclair, but she realizes that she doesn't have the same spark with him. But he does finger bing her. Then something disrupts them and she breaks away and realizes that's not what she wants. Yeah, she like has really bad timing. Yeah, it really gets interrupted.

Yeah. Poor planning, really. During the midst of this, while Sinclair is trying to convince her to leave Blackwell, he can give her her heart's desire. There is this undercurrent of like how phantasmet even came to be. There's a story about how the king of the devil's created this place to, punish his son and he's meant to run it for eternity. We don't know who he is, but that's what created phantasmus in the first place. And they name him Salameas. Salem, but it is Salamace.

So that story is also percolating out there. At some point, her and Blackwell are on the bed, doing it, having a great time, not confessing their love, but their souls are connecting. I mean, she says, like, our souls are connecting. And then knock, knock, knock, knock. Up. A moment. Oofy. Oofy. And they. There's Genevieve, like finally found her. After all this time, it's been a week. Who's also made it through every single trial without a devil, without a phantom, without anybody. Yeah.

She's just skated through all of these trials. She made it. By vanishing and coming back. Yes, because she's had magic the whole time, but Ophi didn't know that. So their sex gets interrupted again. But the sisters have reunited, which is obviously great. Blackwell leaves to give them their time. They catch up.

you know, have their sister bonding. He's watching from another plane like Gilmore girls. Very creepyish. But Genevieve says, well, we need to get you out of this and find that locking key. So then all three of them go kind of searching. But it's time for the next level, the second to last level. Level eight, Sinclair pops up, oh, you found each other. And it's like, yeah, you're the one that told me how to find her. So Sinclair has been in the background trying to get Ophelia away from Blackwell. Then Genevie realizes that she kids. both Sinclair and Blackwell and she's like, wait a minute, no one's kissed me this whole time. I don't you get both of these hot guys. Also, Blackwell's not real happy about that either. That little jealous. It's very jealous. At some point, it's like jealousy looks good on you. And then at some point, she realized, oh, jealousy looks good on you too. They're both jealous of each other. But they do finally decide it's time for Genevieve to go home. She needs to forfeit.

Genevieve's like, no, I don't have to forfeit. We don't have to kill each other until the next round. I should stay. Blackwell says, you should go. You should forfeit. So Genevieve forfeits. And the next one, she goes in and there's a Genevieve. And she's like, well, what the hell are you doing here? You just for Genevieve. There's two of them. She calls for Blackwell. And Blackwell says you have to pick which one is real. So she asks them questions that they both say the same answer to. You can't ask her a question that you would know the answer to because they have access to your memories. And also if you pick wrong, she dies. Oh, yeah. That's important. Level 8. Fraud. She asks, how many boys have you kissed? One of them says, 30.

And then the other one says, oh, it's exactly 11. So, Ophelia has to, like, scrape her brain. She's like, I read the diary and there's no way you've done 30. I would have counted that many in your diary. You wrote down your clothes every day, but there's no way it's 11. So she realizes it's neither one of you. Poof, they both disappear. And Black was like, you did it.

You won. But this is when she realizes this is how her mom died. Because her dad was just in phantasma, and he obviously picked wrong because her mom just died one day out of nowhere. That was crazy. Now she's real pissed. She's like, I'm going to go get that Prince of the Devils. Fuck him. Little did she know she already had.

Right. So she runs out of the trials, Sinclair's there, like, what the hell are you doing? And Blackwell's like, what's going on? And she's like, I'm going to call this devil. At the very beginning of the book, she had called this door, but she couldn't get through the door. And Blackwell says, oh, you've called that door before, and now you know the password. And she realizes that the name of the prince, the longer version of Salem, is the password for the door. And then she's scared.

She doesn't want to go through it. And Blackwell's like, it's like, it's going to be okay. And she's like, when I'm ever going to see you again, he's like, I promise you're going to see me again. She's like, okay, so she steps through the door. It's kind of a bizarre scene. And then Blackwell says, hey, Angel. And then she turns around. He's the same, but not really.

And he is the prince of the devils. What? Dun, dun. Nobody saw that coming. It really took me a minute. It did take me till almost the end. So we get some flashbacks around here where we figure out how Fantazzo was made. And Blackwell, who was Salamis, fell in love with Angel.

And the father, the king of the devils, was mad that he fell in love and kidnapped the girl and tortured her for three days. And by doing so, he was able to control the son. He was mad that the son picked the girl over the kingdom. Mm-hmm. So he tortured Angel and then killed her right in front of the son. And then he sentenced his son to run phantasma and to not remember anything about his life pre-Fantasma until he found the heart and the key. He banished the son. And then what he did is he took this woman, Angels, locket, and he put her soul in it.

And then he was like, I don't want to make this too easy on my son. Let's put a curse on this locket that her soul won't be reborn for at least 500 years. And then let's give it to this prisoner in the jail we have down here and letter free. So poor Salem slash Blackwell has to live at least 500 years. And they gave it to this grim ancestor who hated all devils and was a necromancer, hoping that it was just elongate poor Blackwell's torture. So fast word back to current days and they realize what's happened. Her locket is the key.

She gave him her heart and the key, which is the locket. But the locket, if it's away from her body, her heart stops. Yeah, that part's unfortunate. It's a loophole. That was unfortunate. But as it turns out, as the prince of the devil is, he's very powerful. And he says, I can give you a new heart. Don't worry about it.

But you'll still be cursed because you're in phantasma and you fell in love and that's going to be a problem for you. And she's like, I don't care. I love you. So to save her from the curse, I have to have your soul. This is like gap insurance for your car. You start out with the, you know, So we're going to insure you all the way. However, if you drive off the lot before we fully insure you.

Well, it's like buying house insurance in Florida. Like, it doesn't include flooding. Exactly. In a floodplain. So she's a little skeptical of the soul thing. I mean. Yeah, sure. I mean, one would be.

But he says this is not the easy decision. What would happen? He's like, well, you'd have to be with me forever. And she's like, well, if we connect our souls, you'll be an immortal. And she's like, oh, I'm going to be so sick of your mouth. And he says, I know what to do with my mouth. Cheesy little lines there. We both know that you already appreciate my mouth.

But then it ends. We don't know what she chooses. And then epilogue. Bye. Motherfucker. Dun, dun, dun, done, done. Little Ophelia's walking through New Orleans, just going about her day. Everything's lighter.

The devils have disappeared. She's just having the time. She's excited about something. She walks in a grim manner. looking for Genevieve because she's gotten her a gift and she's very excited about it. And there's Blackwell leaning against the door frame. She's picked up a gift that he got for the sister, which is her to go away on a trip for a few weeks and they're going to meet her there. And what are they going to do with those three weeks?

It's going to be something horizontal, I'm sure. And they've fallen in love. And she says, I'm just glad I was saving a little piece of heaven from hell. Don't forget who else was there. Meow. Po! The cat. Po!

Poe was actually a secret agent spy of Daddy dearest King Devil. He's spying the whole time. Do you remember the book we read about the mobsters with the dog that was like always there? A Pomeranian. That's what reminded me about this cat, this cat that was just running throughout the whole book that like didn't really have a reason to be there. But he was a spy. He's like the Cheshire. He would just appear and disappear.

Yeah, he was like the Cheshire. But he had an option at the end when the curse was broken. And he could have gone back to be with the dad. Gone back to hell. Still didn't choose dad. No. I mean, when you're out, you're out. You can't really move home.

The mom was actually not squandering the money. She was putting money into another house and putting wards all over it to hide. So even if they had lost this manner, the grim manner, which I also find very funny, she's the last name, the Grims. The Grims. I did pick up on that. The Grim Manor, they still have. a whole other house somewhere else. They don't know where it is.

Well, they can't find it. This is book two with a sister goes to this house. It's a similar castle contest. The one we read was book one, book two. The sister goes to find the house. Wendy's like, Damn it! A series!

Well, that's okay. This is book one. I feel okay about it. If this was book two, I'd been real mad. But I didn't pick up any book two vibes. So I feel okay about it. I have the second book. I kept buying the whole series.

Oh, cute. Well, it's weird if you don't have the whole series. Totally. Is it? All right. That is Fantasma. It was kind of a wild ride, but I enjoyed it. Let's do star ratings. We'll go with Kim. I actually really liked this book. I gave it a four out of five because it was different than what we've been reading. It was magical. It had all the things. I would have actually given it a five, but I was irritated that they didn't even remotely have sex until almost 27 chapters. And it kept getting interrupted. kept getting interrupted even after that. Four for me. All right.

Four for you. Jen? I gave it a three. I felt like it was a little young adult and the descriptors weren't there. I couldn't tell what time period it was. The language and the way that they spoke to each other felt very modern day, like snarky, very teenage television show vibes. But then the clothes they were wearing in the time period and all of that felt very regency. So that didn't marry up to me.

and I didn't feel like the female main character, her personality, it didn't match the beginning to the end. That's fair. Don't not kill me. I'm going three and a half, but I really did pick that from about four right now. You always are in the middle. Maybe I should just go first next time. But I am in the middle. The gaps that you're talking about Jen did not bother me that much. I felt like it was a little slow at the beginning, which really had a hard time kind of getting into it. Once I got there, though, I really did enjoy it as we were kind of going through it. But much like scattered bones that we also. read the trials and tribulations are just not my thing repetitive yeah just like how many more try i could understand why they did it that way but it really did break it up they didn't get to the end of the trial they stopped it at trial eight versus trial nine and then we never even finished that made no sense to me yeah that was a total gap to me i agree on the sex it took a while to get in and it was constantly interrupted i actually really liked their relationship and the enemies to lovers

totally didn't bother me i thought that was really cute but They never had any really sweet moments I was hoping for. They did not. No. Three and a half for me. I liked it. I think it was worth the read, but I think there were some drawbacks. Spice.

Spice. I gave it a three and a half. I thought there were some really sexy moments, but they were so few and far between. But I did like the banter. I like that too. I enjoyed that. I thought it did a good buildup. But again, I don't like the slow burn.

You can't wait 27 to 30 chapters and then immediately fall in love. I struggle with that hardcore. And the second book, by the way, is called Enchantra. Enchantra. They're the Wicked Games series. Right. Spice, Jen. I'm going to go three on Spice, too.

I have a hard time with the enemies to lovers thing. You do. Where they're mean to each other the whole time. And then suddenly it's like, but I love you. Wait, what? You guys haven't said one nice thing to each other. And now you're in love. It's little boy pulling pig tails.

I don't like that. Come on. It's real. It's raw. I like it to be a little deeper. Or more mature, I guess. I so wanted to say that's what she said, but I didn't. I were well deeper.

I walked right into that shit. I'm three and a half. I liked the sex scenes. I liked the banter. I like the snarky back and forth. At least three of the sex scenes didn't end. Right. They just got interrupted, which barely started.

Really annoying to me. And some of the sex scenes were like a little grotesque. There was a lot of good banter. The lead up was really sexy, but three and a half. But I like this story. I thought it was different. I like the story, too. It was fun to read.

We need to do a couple different ones on the pod each season because when you read a bunch of billionaire romances back to back, you can see the trope blends together. So it's nice to have a little breakup. Never. I agree to disagree. So this was fun for me because it was a little bit different. I actually did like the story, even with my three and a half rating for both. I would recommend this to someone. I would too.

I know you guys don't like the trials and tribulations. And I didn't with the scattered bones. I was like so past the fact that she was dragging a corpse. everywhere that I couldn't get to the trials. But this one, I actually was really kind of looking forward to the next chapter to see what the next thing was that they had to do, much like Hunger Games. I was like, oh, my God, now what? I was going to ask if you loved Hunger Games.

I did. I actually loved Hunger Games. All right. Well, thank you guys so much for listening. This was Fantasma by Kaylee Smith. Please be sure to check out the rest of season four. You can follow us on boozy bookgazons.com. You can follow us on the socials.

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