Kingdom of the Wicked

Kingdom of the Wicked made me hungry, suspicious and impatient with its demon prince, which is a respectable evening's work.

The food got me first. Not because I can cook any of it, but because a family restaurant is a marvellous place to set a story about secret witchcraft and grief. You can smell a life being interrupted. Kerri Maniscalco understands that the murder at this book's centre needs something ordinary around it to hurt against. An occult mystery staged entirely in darkness can become a tour of decorative gloom. Here, dinner service has to go on. That pressure gives the dark material a pulse.

This is the first Kingdom of the Wicked book, published in 2020, and it is a young adult novel. That matters if you have heard the later trilogy described as far hotter. This opening volume is a revenge mystery with romantic tension, not an adult bedroom fantasy disguised in a YA jacket. Emilia is eighteen. Her grief, loyalty and judgement carry the story. Wrath is a demon prince and a dangerous collaborator, not the answer to what happened to her sister. I liked the book most when it remembered that distinction.

The premise (no spoilers past Emilia meeting Wrath)

Emilia and her twin sister Vittoria are streghe, witches living secretly among humans in Sicily. Their family runs a restaurant. When Vittoria is murdered, Emilia resolves to find the killer, even if that means using forbidden magic. Her search brings her to Wrath, one of the Wicked princes of Hell, whose reputation has been a warning in her life since childhood. He says he has been tasked with investigating murders on the island and claims to be on her side.

That is the early invitation. A young woman wants justice for a person she loved; a supernatural stranger offers help she cannot safely take at face value. The Sicilian setting and the restaurant give the investigation a domestic centre. The demonology makes every alliance suspect. I am stopping there, before the mystery starts exchanging one answer for another.

What works

Maniscalco makes grief active. Emilia does not spend the book only receiving condolences and clues. She chooses to investigate, and her willingness to cross a line into forbidden magic tells us how thoroughly the murder has rearranged her priorities. That is stronger than simply labelling her fierce. The choice has a cost in a world where her family has survived by hiding what it is. It turns revenge from a pose into an argument with everything she has been taught about safety.

The restaurant matters as a craft choice, too. Food and family labour make the setting particular. When a book keeps returning to meals, kitchens and an ordinary business, it can show what supernatural violence has invaded instead of asking us to accept generic stakes. I could forgive a fair amount of ornate darkness because there was somewhere warm for it to threaten. This is a mystery that knows the difference between atmosphere and wallpaper. Most of the time, anyway.

I also like the way Wrath enters as an investigative inconvenience. He may possess information Emilia needs, but accepting it means treating a figure from childhood warnings as a partner. Their uneasy collaboration gives conversations a purpose beyond attraction. Each has reasons to ask questions, withhold answers and test the other's account. The book understands the pleasure of an ally whose help might itself be a clue. A reliable assistant would be much safer and considerably less fun to read.

Emilia's viewpoint keeps the mystery personal. She is not solving an abstract series of crimes from a comfortable distance. The victim is her twin. That closeness gives the investigation a desperate momentum, and it also makes her errors understandable without making them invisible. When her decisions are rash, I can see the grief doing part of the choosing. I do not always approve. I do not need to. A heroine with a reason to be wrong is more engaging than one whose every impulse the narration asks me to applaud.

The book's gothic pleasures are cheerful about being gothic. Forbidden magic, a prince of Hell, family warnings, murders and a vividly rendered Sicilian backdrop: Maniscalco piles on the ingredients and keeps them moving. She has an appetite for sensation, but the domestic detail helps ground it. I enjoyed the excess when it served Emilia's anger. I enjoyed it less when a promising clue had to wait while the prose admired the atmosphere it had already established.

What's polarising

The mystery sometimes relies on withholding more than deduction. I wanted Emilia to have a little more room to connect what she knows before the next alarming development arrived. A revelation can be exciting and still feel as though it has leapt over the work that would make it satisfying. Readers who come for mood and a dangerous companion may barely notice. Readers who want a clean trail of evidence may start making stern notes in the margin. I was in both camps, which is an uncomfortable way to sit.

Wrath can also seem designed to be fascinating before he has done enough to earn it. His title, power and ambiguity are excellent raw materials. There are stretches where the book leans on those materials instead of letting his choices reveal more texture. He improves when Emilia pushes him into a specific disagreement. The dialogue gains bite; he becomes a person with an agenda rather than an impressive silhouette. I wanted more of that and fewer moments asking me to admire the silhouette from a new angle.

The sensual descriptions can crowd the investigation. A meal, a street or a room can be evoked so insistently that forward motion slows. Usually the abundance fits a story about appetite and loss. Occasionally it feels like the menu has been read aloud twice while the murderer remains at large. If you like your mysteries spare and brisk, the richness may feel sticky. I found it worth the occasional detour.

The Wrath of it

Wrath is one of the Wicked princes of Hell, and he claims to be pursuing the same killer Emilia wants. That makes him useful, threatening and difficult to read. The romance is strongest when Emilia does not confuse usefulness with trust. She has a concrete reason to work with him and a concrete reason to question him. Her loyalty to Vittoria gives their friction weight beyond flirtation.

I understand why readers remember him. A demon prince makes a grand entrance even when he does very little, and Maniscalco is good at letting danger sit beside the offer of help. Still, Emilia is the more interesting half of the pair in this volume. Her grief has texture, her investigation has purpose, and her choices can be messy in recognisably human ways. Wrath provides friction. Emilia provides the fire. He can complain to the management if he dislikes that verdict.

Spice and heat

Heat: 1 of 5, glimpses and kisses, which is how romance.io rates this first book. It is YA, and there is no on-page sex. Emilia is eighteen; the romance here is about suspicion, longing and divided loyalties. Do not use the later books' adult reputation to guess what is in this one. The first volume spends far more of its energy on grief and investigation than on physical intimacy.

Content note: Vittoria's murder is central, and the publisher describes her body as desecrated. Other murders and forbidden magic shape the atmosphere. Readers sensitive to violence against women or bereavement should know the mystery begins with both. The book does not need a hotter rating to be dark.

Who it's for

Read it if you want a YA fantasy mystery with family at its heart, a Sicilian kitchen under supernatural pressure and an alliance that cannot be mistaken for a safe friendship. You should enjoy lush atmosphere and be willing to forgive some wobble in the detective work. If you want adult open-door romance, start elsewhere. If you want your demon prince served with a substantial side of sisterly grief and garlic, sit down. Someone has missed dinner, and the whole book feels the absence.

Books like Kingdom of the Wicked

• Serpent & Dove by Shelby Mahurin, for witchcraft and a partnership made difficult by opposing loyalties.
• The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, for a young heroine negotiating dangerous power and an opponent she cannot safely ignore.
• The Foxglove King by Hannah Whitten, for courtly intrigue with death magic and a woman powerful people want to control.

Finished the book and not ready to leave? Wrath is waiting on Fictora.

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