The God and the Gumiho: K-Drama – Fantasy crossover at its finest

Author: Sophie Kim

Rating: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️✨

In the fictional 1990s city of New Sinsi, South Korea, our main character Hani, a gumiho who can shift into a nine-tailed fox, works in a café that caters specifically to supernatural creatures who live alongside humans (though secretly). She’s over a thousand years old and uniquely powerful due to an 1880s killing spree that she went on where she consumed hundreds of livers and souls of men in London. People are still searching for the infamous Scarlet Fox, who is responsible for the killings.

A frequent visitor to the café is Seokga, a moody trickster god who was banished from the realm of the gods after he tried to usurp his borther’s throne. He’s now been tasked with killing unruly creatures how threaten humans and the secrecy of the existence of creatures in New Sinsi. Once he’s met his quota, he’ll be allowed to return to the divine realm.

But when an extra-evil monster threatens the city, Seokga’s brother makes him a deal, if he can kill the monster and the Scarlet Fox, who they also suspect is back and killing people, he’ll be allowed back to his home in the divine realm immediately. Hearing Seokga is hunting the Scarlet Fox, Hani takes a job as his assistant with the intent of throwing him off the trail.

This book was laugh out loud funny and such a pleasure to read. Hani and Seokga have an adversarial relationship mostly based on her distaste of his smug attitude as a customer at the Creature Café and his irritation with her retaliatory sabotage of his coffee (adding copious amounts of extra sugar and cream), one of the few things he likes about the human world. I greatly enjoyed a legitimate basis for hatred in their hate-to-love relationship, which is unfortunately a rare occurrence in some of the books I’ve read lately.

This books is heavily inspired by both Korean mythology and K-Drama, so incorporate some of the more ridiculous qualities of the latter, which was both funny and refreshing. I was surprised by the ending, and legitimately fascinated to see where the author will be going with this series.