Kingdom of the Cursed ♥ Kerri Maniscalco ♥ Kingdom of the Wicked #2

Published October 2021 ♥ Published by Jimmy Patterson

Book One Review : Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco: Witchcraft, Demons, and Romance

Kingdom of the Cursed Review

First of all – I should have reread Kingdom of the Wicked. I forgot, well, most everything & stumbled through most of Kingdom of the Cursed blind & confused. It is not the type of series where you can skip or miss a book. Kingdom of the Cursed takes place moments after Kingdom of the Wicked ended.

Emilia is in Hell & Wrath is up to his old mind games.

For some unknown reason, Emilia must travel through The Sin Corridor before she can enter Hell. Naturally, all of the seven sins are poking and prodding at her along the way. I get it; it’s a thing everyone must do, but Emilia isn’t everyone; she had just signed her soul over to the devil.

Apparently, that grants you no special privileges in Hell.

I have yet to understand the rules of the world of The Wicked fully. There is a curse no one seems to be able to talk about, and no one seems to ask questions about it because of a gag order. Characters’ titles changed over the centuries, and it’s hard to figure out who is who in the now.

It doesn’t help that Emilia appears to know next to nothing about anything. During Kingdom of the Wicked, Emilia dabbled in the dark arts to summon Wrath, inadvertently betrothing the two. In the end, she signed her soul over to The Devil, Pride, whom she is supposed to marry then.

Not one, but two engagements. Except, it’s really only one engagement?

We find out eventually that Wrath is actually The Devil, The King of Hell. I’m glad Wrath is the devil. It bothered me at the end of Kingdom of the Wicked when Pride turned out to be the devil, and it just didn’t make any sense. The further into Kingdom of the Cursed I got, the less sense it made until the truth was finally revealed.

I didn’t think of the repercussions of Wrath being the devil until it was official. Even though logically Wrath as the devil makes more sense, it made me more confused. I get it; Wrath doesn’t like the spotlight. Wrath wants Emilia to want him for him and on her terms. That’s cool and all, props to The Devil Wrath.

The secrecy about literally everything is annoying though.

Part of the reason Emilia even goes to Hell in the first place is to find out more about her twin sister, Vittoria’s death. That’s how our whole story started, witches having their hearts ripped out of them. Unfortunately, by the end of Kingdom of the Cursed, we are no closer to uncovering the truth about what was happening in the mortal world. The truth about Vittoria’s murder is clouded in even more mystery now.

I enjoyed reading Kingdom of the Wicked; I loved it. Unfortunately, I didn’t enjoy Kingdom of the Cursed as much due to my lack of remembering details. I highly suggest having a good memory for detail or perhaps waiting until book three, which is yet to be named, is released.

This is probably my biggest issue with book series; the wait & the forget.

Overall Kingdom of the Cursed was well written. Same quick pace as the first book. All told from Emilia’s perspective. We meet the rest of the Princes of Hell through her eyes. I feel like I would LOVE a recap done from Wrath’s perspective. I don’t think he deserves his own novel, as interesting as he is, just a chapter or two about what went down in the previous book through his eyes. Hot damn that would be amazing.

Before the third book is released, I will have to go back and reread both Kingdom of the Wicked & Cursed.

The chamber gleamed softly like I’d crossed from the underworld and stepped directly onto the surface of the moon.

& there is nothing more dangerous than love, is there? People fight for it. They die for it. They commit acts of war and treason and all manner of sin in its name.

Every villain thinks themselves the hero. And vice versa. In truth, there’s a little villain and hero in each of us.

The serpent in the garden. The one who’d encouraged mortals to sin.

Maybe he was really a blade. Forged in hellfire and deadly as sin.

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❥ Book One Review : Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco: Witchcraft, Demons, and Romance