What It’s About: One sister. Two sinful princes. Infinite deception with a side of revenge . . . Welcome to Hell.
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 . . .
This book…did not improve upon the first in the series. Perhaps a lot of you expected this. Perhaps some of you who have read it loved this novel and currently adore this series. Unfortunately, this was not my experience. Let’s go through it.
The characters and their characterization were not enjoyable. Constantly throughout this book, Emilia portrays herself as being sly, cunning, and someone to be reckoned with, but she’s proven time and time again to be very much out of her depth. Wrath also falls so flat and is so incredibly boring. He’s supposed to be calculating, and frightening. We’re constantly told he’s the worst and so incredibly evil and yet…I’m not getting a lot there. He has very little personality besides smirking and apparently, being a staunch supporter of discussing consent. Great to discuss consent between two individuals because that is incredibly important, but it felt forced when it came from a dull character. There is no character growth whatsoever in this book. Unless Emilia wanting to bone a prince of hell is supposed to be character growth, which I don’t consider it to be.
The writing. Kerri Maniscalco did what I had feared she would resort to, which was relying on repetition. This book felt like an essay she was trying to pad to meet word count requirements. The amount of times Emilia would feel sad about her sister and yet do nothing to solve her murder. The amount of times she would mention her magic but do nothing about it. Around and around we went as Emilia took us through thoughts she’d already had before but would rephrase for us later.
The plot. To be put simply, was a mess because there was little structure to it. How is that investigation going into Vittoria’s murder? It’s going absolutely nowhere. We spend a good half of the book doing absolutely nothing except going back and forth between Emilia wanting to kill and wanting to love Wrath. Things are introduced that sound interesting and then are quickly put aside in favor of useless interactions between Wrath and Emilia to push their romance forward. Meaning the little plot tidbits had very little impact for the reader and could become forgettable. There were things that deserved more time and could have been filled out more like Emilia’s preparation for the Feast of the Wolf, which we got to see and understand little of. It’s those little things that really made it hard to get through this book. Not to mention that the book picks up with actual plot in the last 80 pages, which just isn’t fair to anyone.
I know what I say next will bother some but honestly, there was too much spice in this book. I don’t mind a bit of steam that is built up to, but this book just had it everywhere to the point that it was getting in the way of what readers were mostly here for, which was to find out what caused Vittoria’s death, discover more about the curse, and learn more about the witch lore of this universe.
library in the tower 