Phantasma (Wicked Games, #1) by Kaylie Smith
Phantasma
Author: Kaylie Smith
Series: Wicked Games
Genre: Romantasy
Publish Date: September 2024
Read: May 2026
Story Synopsis: Ophelia Grimm is a necromancer navigating life after her mother’s sudden death, a role she didn’t want and didn’t ask for. Thrust into the position of family caretaker, she’s barely found her footing when her younger sister Genevieve enters Phantasma, a deadly, supernatural competition housed inside a haunted mansion, hoping to win the single wish that serves as its prize and pay off their mother’s debts. Ophelia follows her in, not to win, but to bring her sister home.
Phantasma itself is nine challenges deep, full of demons, monsters, and competitors who would rather eliminate their rivals than outplay them. The mansion generates new horrors daily. Ophelia is out of her depth, until Blackwell, a high-order Phantom bound to the game, strikes a bargain with her. He’ll guide her through the trials. All he asks in return is her time, ten evenings, alone with him. The rule she keeps forgetting: don’t fall in love.
Why does this book beguile? Phantasma is one of those books you pick up on a Tuesday afternoon and resurface from two days later, slightly dazed and absolutely fine with it. At nearly 500 pages, it reads like half that. The pacing is relentless without feeling rushed, and that’s harder to pull off than it sounds.
Ophelia is the reason it works. Her arc across the novel is genuinely satisfying. She starts as someone doing the right thing out of obligation, someone who shows up for everyone else while quietly resenting it, and by the end she’s made choices that are entirely her own. That shift earns its weight.
Blackwell is exactly what he needs to be: charming, protective, morally complicated, and the kind of fictional man you’d absolutely make a terrible bargain with. The slow-burn (then not-slow) dynamic between them is well-constructed, and the smut lands.
The gothic atmosphere throughout the game is one of the book’s strongest elements. The mansion moves, changes, and feels genuinely menacing, even if the horror leans more atmospheric than terrifying. There’s a creepiness to how Phantasma operates, the structure of the challenges, the rules, the way the house seems to want things from its contestants, that keeps the tension alive even in quieter chapters.
One nitpick: the world around the game could have used more texture. The Victorian-adjacent setting has a clear feel, but the specifics stay vague. A firmer time anchor and more deliberate world-building within the trials would have made the stakes feel higher. The game has nine challenges, and there’s room in those pages to go deeper into what Phantasma actually is and what winning it really costs. It doesn’t quite get there.
Still, this is a debut that earns its reputation. It’s fast, it’s gothic, it’s spicy, and Ophelia is worth following.
Bookshop.Org Link*: Phantasma (Wicked Games, #1) by Kaylie Smith
Amazon.com Link*: Phantasma (Wicked Games, #1) by Kaylie Smith
