Kingdom of the Cursed by Kerri Maniscalco

Instead it feels like the author’s editors told her to write ACOTAR lite. And yet so much of what I liked about Kingdom of the Wicked was its unique cultural setting - those decadent food descriptions! The witchy, old-timey Italian vibes! - and that entirely disappears in this installment. Not necessarily the worst critique in the world, considering I loved those novels. the lush-but-dangerous streets of Sicily) and deepened intimacy between the main characters had me doing double takes here and there to remind myself that I wasn’t, in fact, reading a book from the A Court of Thorns and Roses series. While that element of the story is fun and all - very, very fun - the drastic new setting (a frozen-over hell realm vs. When I read the first book in the series, I got way more of a YA vibe - passionate embraces, a simmering slow burn - but Kingdom of the Cursed dives straight into some, ahem, Adult Themes™. Which leads me to my next point: yeah, this book bangs! (Well, mostly.) What a cute lil steamy surprise. So, yadda yadda yadda, Emilia needs to figure out if she can truly trust Wrath, who’s keeping a dangerous secret about his past, and also if she’s maybe-sorta-kinda in love with the dude, which isn’t easy considering an apparent side-effect of going to hell is that you just want to bone each other all the time (lust, sin, etc.). hell, you might even say (ba-dum-tss)(SORRY). Along for the dark and twisty ride into the Seven Circles is the enigmatic Prince of Wrath, who I am happy to report is just as broody and tattooed as ever (potentially even more so).Įmilia encounters slimy, back-stabbing princes fancy palaces draped in a startling amount of damask an ominous party invitation and a clue about who really killed her twin that has her confused as. The sequel to 2019’s Kingdom of the Wicked picks up not long after the end of the first, with revenge-seeking witch Emilia grappling with her rash choice to sell her soul to become Queen of the Wicked (aka hell), where she’ll presumably be able to continue her quest to find out who really murdered her twin sister.

I haven’t read a fun fantasy novel in a hot minute, and Kerri Manscalco’s Kingdom of the Cursed was exactly that: fun.

Kingdom of the Cursed by Kerri Maniscalco