Book Review | The God and the Gumiho by Sophie Kim

Hey loves! Sorry for being quiet on here, I’ve been posting my reviews mainly straight to Instagram instead lately. This is one book where I couldn’t fit my review into the post, because I used too many characters talking about how much I loved it!

The God and the Gumiho by Sophie Kim is a book I’ve been seriously excited for, this last year I’ve fallen in love with a couple of k-dramas and I especially enjoy them when they’re urban fantasy! So, this being both in book form had me pretty excited for it.

This book did not disappoint in the slightest and Sophie is definitely a new fave author! Full review below.

About the Book

Title: The God and the Gumiho
Series: Fate’s Thread #1
Author: Sophie Kim
Publisher: Hodderscape
Release Date: June 4th 2024
Pages: 410
Source: eARC provided by the publisher (this in no way affects my review which is honest and unbiased) and I also have bought the standard UK edition!
Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

Synopsis

In this delightfully romantic Korean contemporary fantasy, a fallen trickster god must pair up with a coffee-slinging, shapeshifting fox to track down a demon of darkness before it devours the mortal world.

They’ll do anything to outsmart each other. Anything, except fall in love.

Kim Hani – the once-terrible gumiho known as the Scarlet Fox – spends her days working at a café and trying not to let a certain customer irk her.

Seokga – a trickster god thrown from the heavens for his attempt at a coup – spends his days hunting demons and irking a particular gumiho.

When a demon of darkness escapes the underworld, and the Scarlet Fox emerges from hiding before quickly vanishing, Seokga is offered a chance at redemption: kill them both, and his sins will be forgiven.

But Hani is prepared to do anything to prevent Seokga from bringing her to justice, even trick her way into his investigation. Anything, that is – except fall in love . . .

Review

The God and the Gumiho starts as (and is mainly) an urban fantasy set in 1990s South Korea (in a fantasy city called New Sinsi). We have two perspectives throughout, with a bonus third perspective late on, and it’s a bit of a mystery story too.

Seokga, the titular God, is a fallen god tasked by his brother to earn back his full position and powers after trying to pull a coup on him. He’s a trickster by nature and mostly maintains a very strict demeanour (with a tad superiority complex).

Hani, our Gumiho, is a lovely ball of sunshine! Though she does believe it’s perfectly acceptable to go around eating livers and taking souls (as long as the person deserves it, anyway).

An unruly dark monster, called a eoduksini, has decided to start going on a little murder spree, and Seokga is tasked with finding and killing them. Hani finds herself in a spot of trouble at a similar time, and when Seokga ends up tasked with tracking down an infamous gumiho also… she decides it’s safest to become his assistant.

Seokga and Hani pretty much hate each other at the start, which makes for some excellent snarky interactions between the two for most of the story! Hani can’t help but try to stick the knife in by sending jibes. Slowly, they start to become more comfortable around each other and such a natural, lovely build up to that.

Hani is, of course, lying about some things for the majority of the story, which adds another layer to what would be an amazing k-drama to watch! So many interactions between Hani and Seokga had me laughing a lot, but at the same time I genuinely cried during some of the more intense moments.

Throughout the story, there were some points that reminded me a lot of season one of Tale of the Nine-Tailed, and I adored that. I’ve only watched it fairly recently, so I couldn’t help but imagine the main characters as the main actor and actress from that. If you enjoyed the k-drama then you’ll love the book, and vice versa!

Overall, I just adored this story and I will definitely be reading more from Sophie Kim, thankfully I already have a copy of Last of the Talons!