May the Best Ghoul Win

I had cocktails on Saturday. I had cocktails on Friday. And drink a brunch. I drink the airport. You're going to go to the hotel.

I drank everywhere I was. This weekend. It's your favorite room. [MUSIC PLAYING] But the lot's glitter at your friend.

“We are in for some boozy book gazzoms today.”

Join three cousins, creating a titillating hit space, where steamy romance novels-- glide was strong, dark devs. So sit back, sit slow, and enjoy the ride. Welcome back, boozy baves to another episode

of boozy book gazzoms, I'm Lynn. I'm Jen, and I'm Kim. And tonight, we are recapping Fantasma by Kaley Smith,

which is basically a hunger game's

meets a haunted house in hell. Yeah, that sounds fair, right? First of all, hot phantoms. And a house that is aggressively trying to kill everyone inside of it.

Kim, what are we drinking tonight? Tonight, we are pairing our read 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 cognac, some honey, some liquor, 43, which I didn't know it came into different flavors. So we're going to go with the original,

“'cause 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. Yeah. Kim, joy. 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 Grem.

She and her sister and her mother live in New Orleans, which would love a good book based in New Orleans. Always. But her mother is 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. It's 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, 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 is 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 in dead people, just coming into her house all the time.

And life 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 a rummage trust.

I think she was so sheltered. Once they figured out that she had powers at all, it was like a hundred percent. All the focus on her at all times, practice, practice, practice. While her little sisters run in around with her friends

and be in 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 life gifts that you need to work on”

as an ecromancer. 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 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.

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 knew that had OCD.

So it was really interesting afterwards to read about that because in the book, she makes that sound kind of spooky. Like, oh, it's a spooky, evil voice. Well, like she's like in like a pulter, guys, like someone's like in her body or something.

Yeah, but really, this is a very common issue for people that are a 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 you're coffee's in it, you said 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 mine. Well, I want another. We know people. Oh, you have one yellow ones in. And so we joke about it, but I do think this is part of it. And we all, I'm sure at some point, our life

have some sort of OCD tendon tendons 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

you have to 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 know, me that, Europe said.

Well, in her case, it just keeps her in place. It's like you should kill them. You should kill them. Do it now. It came in a lot too about her soul.

Everybody's embarrassed by you. Embarrassed, embarrassed embarrassed. Why would he look twice at you? Really just takes her down. That's on confidence, speed 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 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 lock it. So this lock it has been passed down from grim 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 lock it will kind of guide her in some ways throughout the book and you don't really understand why. Until the very end and her mother tells her

you can never take it off.

You can never give it away. Want it 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 nurse sister go to bury their mother

and write afterwards the bank shows up and says, oh actually we're about to own your home 'cause your mom took out a loan against the house. You owe us $35,000. We're gonna foreclose in 30 days, best get to packing.

Not that fuck us. It's really awful and it feels like very much struggling to realize this agenda be for younger sister actually new 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 gonna have to leave their house and this is very upsetting and Genevieve says great. This is like the best we 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-seated obligation to carry on. The family name and there's some words

between affiliate and Genevieve like all sisters and tense moments. But if you really hurt Genevieve's feelings and buffviouses,

I always have to clean up your messes.

I'll have to clean up this one too and Genevieve runs away. A video 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 or it was obviously very tense?”

I think they tiptoe around her because of the procedure. It hasn't hurt. I anxiety it. Yeah, I agree.

So Genevieve runs away. Affiliate house 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 carriage is the way that they talked was very modern day and that it was a giant invitation 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 mist there that was a little bit of a gap for me. They were very vague about it, didn't bother me. I didn't catch that wording.

Oh, I did. So Felia 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

on your 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 Fantasma's 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. As 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 a 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's been researching Fantasma for years. Notice that it's coming. And then she finds this named 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 if it is mine.”

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.

This is like the hunger games with zero skills and 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. As she tries to find the sister in the crowd, she asks about Gabriel. As soon as these doubles here, 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 who 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

in Fantasma at your own risk. They ask for name which she gives which apparently is the whole thing with doubles. 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 the various paranormal creatures to know which one is the more important than the other. I did not know this going in but there's an apparition which Kim wears on the hierarchy. It's 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 goals, then apparitions, then pulter guys, then fanom. 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

just falling out of their apparition body, trailing along. And she kind of can barely hold it down. And apparition says, oh, you're only one of five who hasn't fainted with her own up. And she's like, oh, 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 out of high-tailed it to, you know, batter readers or something.

We might have hooked up last night. We don't know. Big count. Big, 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, doubles have nine layers of hell.

They all have like a theme night. Nine trials that they have to go through. Yeah, a theme night. Party. Love a good theme night.

More vividly 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, Kade and Lucy are cousins. Well, we find out as 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 just like, "Love me for you." She's expecting guts everywhere.

She walks into, 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 her 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 have to 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 the couch in a dining hall. And who's there, but this hot, attractive guy with white hair and green eyes.

He's very corporal, but she feels like he's a ghost. And he asks for 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, "Why don't I want to tell you like I fell in 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. So same guy she met days before. And he called her Angel on the street to when they had that mind-conversation. When she's pissed right because she says we don't remember being 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

I didn't think it sucked all the way.

“But I also felt like the first few chapters of this book we're hearing about this”

Meek, high anxiety, very sheltered girl that can barely leave 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 at it, too. 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 my name. 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, but 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 the sky.

And I'm like, where did that come from? I got sassy from get go with this family.

She definitely had her issues, but I never thought of her as meek so much as like Resonance.

But she tells the dude about her sister. She asks, do you know Genevieve? Have you seen her? Here's what she looks like. Do you know a Gabriel, when she says Gabriel again, his eyes react, but he doesn't tell her anything.

He offers, you know, 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 is she doesn't help him find the heart and key. She will give him 10 years of her life. And that's all he survives, it's all these bargains. And she agrees. I mean, options.

Right, they were limited. It's worth it for her. It's a finder sister. There's a very small, very small grouping. Yeah, 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. But 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. Great.

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 double.

Yeah, I was really surprised how many people did that. I wasn't. It was a dad or dad. It's in some sort. Yeah, maybe.

Until I do, I don't know. Before she went into this level, her and Kate 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 Kate 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 far. Shocker. Her and another guy have to run, run, run, run, run around. Like, black will appear, 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 Kate 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'd 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 big. 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 a mortal. She's human, yeah.

But he still hates her guts, but at least the rest of their group isn't like out to get her too. 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, feeling everything sounds good. It feels so horrible to have everything. Kind of a double, 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 do that.

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 sweet heart 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 cheese, Beetle cheese. It's like Beetle cheese. So she's set his name a couple of times in lust. And the real blackwell, please stand up.

She goes 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, Kate, and then he just disappears. Obviously, to go find Kate. He's charming. It's to our ring. 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 art 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 horrors.

So she's trying to find the start and key. She finally finds a hidden button in the library. I wanted the shelves. And the shelf does one of those creepy where it just turns around. Oh, like, Scooby-doo.

So she calls Blackwell.

Blackwell, Blackwell, 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 Kate because he hurt you. Oops. Oh, do anything. Sorry. But they end up in this puzzle room where they find all these bricks

that have a one to three or four or five. And 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. It's not stringent. Oh, I don't want to be poop-bop-boop. I don't know what I remember. All right, fine.

Children of the 80s, you know. No, no, sorry. I'm not that old. And when they hit all of the bricks, there is a little piety hole.

Looks shows up. Oh, boy. No, not ideal. Lizzy. Not ideal.

I think it is. You're going to work on using this other word, Heidi. And whole. Apparently. Just because it didn't, doesn't mean it's a piety hole.

Okay, okay. I'll look it up. That's the one to the back. 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's really worried about affiliate getting burned. Like it'll burn through her clothes.

So he just takes them all off of her. Help. 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 less stride if he had been the actual person in the trial. And then she's mad. He definitely taunts her. Heidi, that's a whole book. Yep.

And as they're about to leave, they see description 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. If 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 Kate. He's horded like five rings. And she has no rings.

But she finally gets a ring and latches it on.

He goes falling. Ooh, 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. They're 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, "Tang it." Well, that was good timing. He's usually the one that doesn't get to, you know.

Right at the start. That's not about him. No, no, absolutely not. That's fair. At some point, they are having sex after 27.

Throughout the book, they're not only of these levels. You have these haunts, we're basically the devils and the ghouls and the ghosts are trying to 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 at that time. A midst of rain shower of blood. Like, "What's a matter with a little blood?" That no one ever until the scene.

This book felt very young adults to me. It felt very hunk of games. Yeah. In the way that hunk of games is young adults. But then we got to this and I was like, "Oh, not so young adult.

It's a place to stop at the middle. Yeah. It's a little psycho adult. Yeah, a little adult.

“And I think we're only on wet night through your forehead at this point.”

Through your, yeah, they're falling for each other. It's like three days in. It's Wednesday. It's not a slow burn. It's a fast burn.

Hump 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 no, she's not great. And he tries to kind of lure her into giving up on blackwell. Like, they're a 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 while I need the popcorn. Oh, let's see that, man.

Oh my god. Woo-hoo. 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 of watching her.

So, yeah, he knows what's going on all of the time. When she says, I want to know where about this Gabriel. Blackwell says, "All make a deal with Jasper to go get the contestant logs." They find many, many, many, many different Gabriel's.

“And so, Claire, when he finds her, says, you should ask him about page 882.”

So, she knows the blackwell's keeping something from her. And he definitely is. So, she asks him about it. He admits not only his Gabriel listed, but so is Tessie Grimm. Her mother.

But in Tessie, I didn't see the mom. She kept saying, "Steer, Cleer." What does it say? You protest too much. Doth protest two months.

There are a billion more trials.

Well, there's nine totals. So, we've been through what three? -Mind us a billion. I don't know about the Natasha, 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's 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 a failure while in fantasma. 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 double named Andrea to help create a curse that would make Gabriel forget about them. But that curse wore off because the fantasma curse I guess was stronger.

-It was a magical restraining order. -I'm not telling you 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. But he didn't win. -No. -Neither have them made it. -Who lost?

-They bought it. -Well, yeah, though we find that out. Buckel 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 partner,

so which obviously really doesn't want her to cut him out. Because she pushes him away, and then she pushes her. -They're to act. -Yeah.

-Second act. -Second third.

-All the right goes. -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 silly fantasy? 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. Do you remember the movie? -Oh, yeah, what David Bowling?

“-I remember the bay, what bay? -Yeah, so in.”

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 ball room.

Her night gown turns to this beautiful red dress, and very Cinderella-esque and creepy A.F. -It's meant to run off 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 still 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 she doesn't have the same spark with him, but he does finger-banger. Then something disrupts them, and she breaks away, and realizes that's not what she wants. -Yeah, she has really bad timing. -Yeah, it really gets interrupted.

-During the midst of this, while Sinclair's trying to convince her to leave Blackwell, he can give her her her heart's desire. There is this undercurrent of like how Fientasmate 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 Fientasmate in the first place,”

and they name him, Tell them Mayus. -Sailum, but it is, Tell them Mayus. 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, I think she says, like, our souls are connecting,

and then knock knock knock knock knock that moment.

Oh, fii, oh fii, and 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 pantom, without anybody. Yeah. -And she's gated 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 there are sex kids that erupted 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.

These watch every minute of their 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 Genevieve realizes that she kissed both Sinclair and Blackwell. And she's like, wait a minute, no one's kissed me. This whole time.

I can't go to 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 till the next round. I should stay. Blackwell says you should go.

You should forfeit. So Genevieve for fits. 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 forfeit.

And then there's another Genevieve. There's two of them.

“She calls her 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. So 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 eight, fraud.

She asks how many boys of you kissed.

One of them says 30. And then the other one says, oh, it's exactly 11. So a feeling has to like scraper 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. Blackwell's like, you did it. You won. But this is when she realizes this is how her mom died. Yes, her dad was just in Phantasma.

And he obviously picked wrong because her mom just died one day out of nowhere. That was crazy. No, she's real pissed. She's like, I'm going to go get that Prince of the Devil's. Fuck him.

Little did she know she already had, right? So she runs out of the trials and clears 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 going to be okay. She's like, but I'm ever going to see you again.

He's like, I promise you're going to see me again. And she's like, okay, so she steps through the door. It's a 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 Devil's. So it's time, so it's time. It really took me a minute to take me to the most of the end. So we get some flashbacks around here where we figure out how Fintaz was made.

And Blackwell, who was Salamacis fell in love with Angel. And the father, the King of the Devil's was mad. He fell in love and kidnapped the girl and tortured her for three days. And by doing so, he was able to control the sun. He was mad that the sun picked the girl over the kingdom.

So he tortured Angel and then killed her right in front of the sun.

“And then he sends his son to Ron Fintazman to not remember anything about his life.”

Pre Fintazma until he found the heart and the key. He vanished the sun. And then what he did is he took this woman, angels lock it. 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.

We have to up here in letter free.

“So for Salam, 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 would just a long gate for Blackwell's torture. So fastward back to current days and they realized what's happened. Her locket is the key. She gave him her heart and the key.

Just lock it. 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, she'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 Fintazma 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 the same or from the curse, I have to have your soul. This is like gap insurance for your car. You start out with bad. No, really.

In sure you all the way, however, if you drive off a lot before we fully ensure you, what's like buying house insurance in Florida, like it doesn't include flooding. Exactly. And a floodplain. So she's a little skeptical of the soul thing.

Demi and Desher. 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 in a mortal. And she's like, oh, I'm going to be so sick of your mouth. And he's like, I know what to do with my mouth. She's a little lines there. But no, they're you already appreciate my mouth.

But then it ends. We don't know what she chooses. And then, Apple loves mother. [INAUDIBLE] She's excited about something.

She walks into grum manner, looking for Genevieve because she's gotten her 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 week?”

Going to be something horizontal, I'm short. And I'm going to fall 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.

Oh, the cat. Oh, Poe was actually a secret agent spy. Oh, for 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 palmarine, and it's where it might have been about this cat, this cat that was just running throughout the whole book. But like to 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. He could have gone back to be with the dad, gone back to the health, still didn't choose

dad. No. I mean, when 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 words all over it to hide. So even if they had lost this manner, the grim manner, which I also find very funny. She used the last name, the grims. The grims. I did pick up them up.

The grim manner, they still had a whole other house somewhere else. They don't know where it is. Well, they can't find it. This is book two. The 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 can't buying the whole series. Oh, cute. Oh, it's weird if you don't have the whole series. Totally. Is that it?

Sorry. 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 they kept giving it an eruptant, getting interrupted even after that. For me. All right. For me.

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 or personality didn't match the beginning to the end.

Don't not kill me. I'm going three and a half, but I really did pick that before 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 they 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 finish. I made no sense to me. That was like total gap to me. I agree on the sex that took a while to get in and there was constantly interrupted.

I actually really liked their relationship and the enemy celebs totally didn't bother me. Dude, 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. I gave it a three and a half. I thought there were some really sexy moments, but there were so few and far between. But I did like the banter. I liked 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 in Tantra.

In Tantra. They're the wicked games series. All right. Spice. I'm gonna go through and 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. I quite like.

You guys don't have one nice thing to each other. And now you're in love. A little boy pulling pig tail. I don't like that. Come on.

It's real. It's real. It's real. I like it to be a little deeper. I'm a tour.

I guess.

“I so wanted to say that's what she said.”

But I didn't. I was looking for a walk to write into that shit. I'm three and a half. I like the sex scenes. I liked the banter.

I like the snarkey back and forth. At least three of the sex scenes didn't in. Right. They just got into rough days of 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 pot 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 break up.

Never. I created a 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. But I couldn't get to the trials.

But this one and 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. 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 Kaley Smith. Please be sure to check out the rest of season four. You can follow us on boozybookgasand.com. You can follow some of the socials. We've got Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube.

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