Synopsis 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…
I really enjoyed Kingdom of the Wicked so I was looking forward to reading the sequel but unfortunately I did not enjoy this book at all. It was a hot mess.
This book takes place just after the events of the first book and while the first book had an interesting plot that kept me reading one more chapter this book is mostly Emilia trying to be smart and scheming but not actually doing much at all. You could read the last couple chapters and move on to the third book and not miss anything of importance.
This book is also aimed at younger YA and yet it is not appropriate at all for them. There is romanticisation of sexual assault and violent behaviour. One scene where Wrath gets Emilia completely drunk to the point she can’t even feed herself so she unable to consent and then later tells her he was doing it to teach her how to protect herself. Later in the book, Emilia comments that some people like violent behaviours when it comes to romance and this is such a dangerous thing to normalise for young people. I honestly don’t know how this was all included in the book.
Emilia also annoyed me to no end in this book, she acted like she was being so smart and badass but she was not, she was just plain stupid and unable to work anything out that every single person around her already knew. But at least she did it with confidence, I guess. She repeatedly said the same thing again and again and yet all we see from her: no thoughts, head empty, only horny. I don’t have an issue with romance in general but this was just not it. It felt very toxic and Wrath withheld important information from her regarding who she is actually supposed to be marrying and it just felt ick.
Wrath was just as annoying and after him basically assaulting Emilia in the name of training her, I just did not like him at all after that. This wasn’t addressed at all in the book at any point and I really need these scenes to stop being shown in books aimed at young teens.
This book is also very romance heavy and the plot suffered because of it, in fact there was very little plot at all. We make zero progress throughout the whole book and then right at the end all the reveals happen together and in the span of the last two chapters which were also generally very obvious to everyone except Emilia.
The ending of this book was really underwhelming because there was so little plot and everything was so vague and just I was barely interested by the end because I was so irritated by having to get through a whole book to end on THAT ending when the ending of the first book suggested we would get a lot more information but we got very little.
I’m so disappointed because I actually enjoyed the first book and this book was a mess.
The Tsundoku Chronicles 