Kingdom of the Wicked by Kerri Maniscalco

☆☆☆☆☆

Summary:

Emilia and her sister Vittoria are twins but they are not normal twins. They are also witches who live among humans in their home in Sicily. Vittoria began acting strange and when Emilia finds her dead body she is set on finding out why. Emila uses dark magic to summon a demon to help her figure out the clues that were left behind. She accidentally summons Wrath, one of the seven princes of Hell. She has been warned all her life never to trust anything a prince of hell says. Against her better judgement she allows Wrath to help her in figuring out who killed her sister.

Opinions (no spoiler):

I absolutely adored this book. From the first page I knew I would love everything about it. I flew through it and could not put it down. I’ve heard from fellow readers that the beginning was sort of slow and you had to push through to get to the good parts. However, I didn’t feel that way at all. I was interested from cover to cover and was so interested in the backstory of the witches as much as Wrath (which is saying a lot because I love Wrath). This is meant to be a trilogy and the second book releases October 2021 and I’m very excited to get my hands on it.

Emilia felt like a realistic protagonist. She’d react at all the right times and sometimes got nervous and was unable to focus on how to get out of the situation. Even though that would sometimes happen she was a badass. She was able to defend herself against Wrath’s sarcastic comments and was able to hold her own.

This book has the enemies to lovers trope which is personally my favorite of all the tropes. In my opinion, this book was very true to that trope. The relationship they formed in this book was realistic and has major potential in the next couple of books. The small comments here and there showed their progression away from enemies which I enjoyed reading about.

The writing was beautiful as well, Kerri Maniscalco did an excellent job explaining everything even though there were moments I was confused but everything made sense in the end in my opinion.

I highly recommend this book if you’re looking for a tension filled story with lots of layers.

Spoilers:

I loved the back and forth between Wrath and Emilia the moment she summoned him. Emilia was able to talk back to Wrath which I think sparked his interest right away.

The scene that really sparked my interest was when Emilia started freaking out because Wrath didn’t tell her she bound them into marriage. Him keeping that secret from her gave me major Rhysand vibes from A Court of Mist and Fury (which I loved). Especially since she found out from someone else and not him. And you can tell he felt something more for her which is why he didn’t want to tell her. In the fear that he would possibly scare her off and maybe he was afraid of her reaction.

Another one of my favorite scenes was when she was bit by the Viperdae and even though Wrath said he was not going to come and save her he did anyway. And then he had to do a ritual in order to save her. It was a great scene and again gave me Rhysand vibes.

Wrath was definitely hiding things from Emilia during the whole book but from my perspective his feelings towards her felt very raw and real and hopefully she sees that in the next book.

I loved Emilia’s family, especially her Nonna (she was iconic).

Even though Emilia’s encounters with a few other princes of Hell were not very pleasant I enjoyed reading about it and they did add a lot to the story.

Regarding Vittoria’s murder I knew it was Antonio from the moment he showed up in the first scene. So I did see that coming but was still shocked when it ultimately happened

The ending left off at a good point where she was “reunited” with Wrath even though she was mad at him (and he’s probably mad at her too). But at least they’ll be together a lot in the next book since they’ll both be in Hell (hehe).

Favorite quotes;)

“‘Live long enough to hate me for this’” -Wrath (page 160)

“I wanted to kick him for being so dangerously breathtaking.” -Emilia (page 212)

“‘For what it’s worth I wouldn’t have let the demon kill you. Maybe a slight nip.’” -Wrath (page 248)

“‘Liar.’” -Wrath (page 249)

‘“If you still want to rip your clothes off when we get home, we can discuss it.’” -Wrath (page 267)