The Winged Game by Sophie Kim
on July 2, 2026
Genres: Fiction / Fantasy / Romance, Fiction / Romance / Enemies to Lovers, Fiction / Romance / Fake Dating, Fiction / Romance / Fantasy, Fiction / Romance / Sports
Pages: 544
Format: ARC
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Sophie Kim’s The Winged Game is basically what you’d get if you mixed an adult version of Harry Potter with Fourth Wing — but made it an intense extreme fantasy sports story. And honestly? It works.
This book follows Taissa Cho, a disgraced former star of Carriwitchet, a brutal rugby-esque sport played on top of winged creatures. After her rival Kion Locke destroys her career, Taissa spends years hating him and the sport that abandoned her… until she’s suddenly offered a chance back into the league. The catch? She has to fake date the very man she blames for ruining her life.
The enemies-to-lovers tension in this book was SO good. That’s one of my favorite tropes, and Sophie Kim absolutely nailed the chemistry between Cho and Locke. Their relationship felt believable, emotional, and full of intensity. I kept waiting for the romance to fully explode into a spicy payoff, though, and that’s honestly where this fell a little short for me. There are mentions of off-page spicy moments, but very little actually happens on the page. I can definitely tell this author previously wrote YA because even though this is marketed as adult fantasy romance, it still reads fairly tame outside of the language.
That said, I still had a really fun time with this book. The Carriwitchet scenes were incredibly entertaining and cinematic — I genuinely want to watch this sport on the big screen someday because the action sequences were intense. On top of the romance and sports elements, there’s also a mystery surrounding a strange illness affecting the winged creatures and someone potentially sabotaging the game itself, which kept the story moving at a fast pace.
This is honestly unlike anything I’ve read before, which makes it hard to compare to other books, but it was definitely entertaining from start to finish. If extreme fantasy sports, winged beasts, enemies-to-lovers tension, and high-intensity action sound even remotely interesting to you, I’d absolutely recommend checking this one out.
Thank you to NetGalley and Del Rey for the intense eARC!
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