Review: Kingdom of the Cursed (Kingdom of the Wicked #2)

Kingdom of the Cursed (Kingdom of the Wicked #2)
By Kerri Maniscalco

Published By: Hodder and Stoughton
Publication Date: October 5, 2021
Date Read: October 15, 2022
Genre: NA – Fantasy
Source: Bought
Format: Hardback
Pages: 448

From Goodreads:
After selling her soul to become Queen of the Wicked, Emilia travels to the Seven Circles with the enigmatic Prince of Wrath, where she’s introduced to a seductive world of vice.

She vows to do whatever it takes to avenge her beloved sister, Vittoria… even if that means accepting the hand of the Prince of Pride, the king of demons.

The first rule in the court of the Wicked? Trust no one. With back-stabbing princes, luxurious palaces, mysterious party invitations, and conflicting clues about who really killed her twin, Emilia finds herself more alone than ever before. Can she even trust Wrath, her one-time ally in the mortal world… or is he keeping dangerous secrets about his true nature?

Emilia will be tested in every way as she seeks a series of magical objects that will unlock the clues of her past and the answers she craves…

“Instead of being ruled by fear, I could become fearless.”

I read Kingdom of the Wicked not long after it first released a couple of years ago, and while I really enjoyed it, I didn’t love it quite as much as a lot of my friends seemed to. I still really liked it and felt like it had the potential to be amazing, and so I couldn’t wait to give the second book a go. I had such high hopes that this would make me fall head over heels in love with the series… Unfortunately, this one left me really disappointed.

I have such mixed feelings about this book! First we’ll go for the good… I love the concept, the writing is so easy to fall into and forget about the world for a few hours. I really enjoy Kerri’s writing style and I will definitely be picking up more of her series in the future. I loved the characters and the whole setting being in the demon world. I just adore books about demons and the devil and this was just perfect for me … however there was just a lack of character development and world building for me. I felt like this one just felt a little bit ‘off’.

I went into this one super excited to see where the plot was going to go… and I felt like there was a significant lack of plot in this one. It was replaced with a whole load of spicy scenes that did not feel natural for me. Book 1 in this series is very much in the realm of upper YA, with no spice… and I feel like we went from PG-13 to straight out porn in this one with no rhyme or reason for it. Some series do the switch from YA to spicy NA well, with the development of the character slowly getting more mature and it feels right. In this one it felt, to me at least, like there was no character development or world building behind this sudden switch. We went from one extreme to the other with no development in between, and it actually just made me super sad. I am not bothered by spicy books… but this just didn’t feel right. It felt weird and rushed and the plot significantly suffered for it. There was a million times that I just rolled my eyes and was like ‘here we go again.’

Kingdom of the Cursed, and the whole series, has such a great potential with this plot but for me it was completely overshadowed by the romance and the spice. I was just left feeling really… ‘meh’ about it and I am no longer excited to dive into book 3. Especially since I hear it’s even more spicy than this one. I am so disappointed and just feel really deflated after this one. There was such potential for more great plot and character development, and it just wasn’t there for me. I will read the third book at some point, to see how it ends, but right now I am so disappointed and wish I hadn’t bothered picking up this series in the first place.

“The stars incline us; they do not bind us.”

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