Phantasma by Kaylie Smith – librorum in sempiternum
Hello and welcome again for another review!! (I will do other types of posts later on, promise, I just don’t have the time right now but stay tuned!)
Before diving into today’s book, how are you? Making progress on those reading goals?
Phantasma by Kaylie Smith
Genre: Romantasy
When Ophelia and her sister discovers their mother brutally murdered, there is no time to grieve: Ophelia has inherited both her powerful death-driven magic and enormous debt on their home. Circumstances go from dire to deadly, however, when Ophelia’s sister decides to pay off the loan by entering Phantasma—a competition where most contestants don’t make it out alive and the winner is granted a single wish.
The only way to save her sister is to compete. But Phantasma is a cursed manor, with twisting corridors and lavish ballrooms, and filled with enticing demons and fatal temptations. Ophelia will need to face nine floors of challenges to win… if her fears don’t overtake her first.
When a charming, arrogant stranger claims he can protect and guide Ophelia, she knows she shouldn’t trust him. While Blackwell may not seem dangerous, appearances can be deceptive. But with her sister’s life on the line, Ophelia can’t afford to turn him away. She just needs to ignore the overwhelming, dark attraction drawing them closer and closer together.
Because in Phantasma, the only thing deadlier than losing the game is losing your heart.
I’ve been seeing this come up A LOT on my fyp so I decided to give it a try, especially when I heard it was similar to Caraval–which I wasn’t necessarily a big fan of (the first book especially) but it was an entertaining read.
To sum up the story without spoiling it: We have Ophelia, a girl from a family of necromancers (passed down from mother to daughter after their death) who gets the responsibility of taking up the family business after her mom unexpectedly passes away. The next day, a couple of guys from the bank comes to their house requesting they go with them to the bank and she discovers she risks losing their house, and the business, if they’re not able to pay a huge sum of money for a loan her mom apparently took (something she had no idea about but, suspiciously enough, her sister Genevieve seems to know something about). Anyway, she and her sister get in a fight and–unbeknown to her–that’s the last she’ll see of her for a while. Why?because it seems her sister had the brilliant idea of participating in this tricky game called phantasma to win the money (well, she’ll win a wish granted from a Devil). What does Ophelia do? Get into Phantasma of course!
I think this book had the potential to be a 5 stars read for me BUT the ending was quite predictable and dare I say poorly executed? Like at the beginning, it was a solid enjoyable read, I was hooked from the very first page, I loved it. But then towards the end, things started taking a dramatic turn for the very predictable and like making no sense… Personally, there was a part that I truly believe we could have done without! I felt it was there just to heighten the stakes and make it this cute dramatic scene but all it did was leaving me like…
Overall, the characters were well-rounded, the plot good if not predictable, an interesting storyline that I hope will be better in the second book (which apparently will follow Genevieve).
Rating: 3.75 stars
Did you read Phantasma? If you had to choose between it and Caraval, which one would you choose? I think I’ll go with Caraval
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