A Curse for True Love by Stephanie Garber
Genre: Fantasy Romance
Heat Level: Closed Door
Series: Once Upon a Broken Heart
Release Date: October 24, 2023
This year has been the year of reading YA fantasy romance for me. I picked up Once Upon a Broken Heart earlier this year and became obsessed with Stephanie Garber’s writing style. I even went back and read her entire backlist! I was anxiously awaiting the release of A Curse for True Love, especially after absolutely LOVING The Ballad of Never After! I don’t think I was this excited for a book in a really long time. If you’ve read the series I’d love to know which book was your favorite!
**SPOILERS AHEAD** if you haven’t read the book – there are definite spoilers in my review proceed at your own caution!
SYNOPSIS
Two villains, one girl, and a deadly battle for happily ever after.
Evangeline Fox ventured to the Magnificent North in search of her happy ending, and it seems as if she has it. She’s married to a handsome prince and lives in a legendary castle. But Evangeline has no idea of the devastating price she’s paid for this fairytale. She doesn’t know what she has lost, and her husband is determined to make sure she never finds out . . . but first he must kill Jacks, the Prince of Hearts.
Blood will be shed, hearts will be stolen, and true love will be put to the test in A Curse for True Love, the breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Once Upon A Broken Heart trilogy.
REVIEW
I’m not even lying when I say that A Curse for True Love was one of my most anticipated releases – definitely this year if not ever? The Once Upon a Broken Heart series has been a favorite. I only recently picked up this series after seeing it all over booktok, but it was so good. The Ballad of Never After is up there as one my favorite books this year. I loved the angst, the yearning and the slow burn between Evangeline and Jacks. I was ready for A Curse for True Love. I needed to know how this series would play out after that ending.
In A Curse for True Love Evangeline doesn’t remember much. She has bits and pieces of her memories, but she can’t recall her handsome husband the Prince and not Lord Jacks who everyone keeps talking about. Soon her life is in danger and it seems that anytime someone tries to hurt her, a guard named the Archer is there to rescuer. We know that Archer is Jacks himself, but Evangeline doesn’t know this and our heart is breaking on Jacks behalf. Does Evangeline regain her memory? Will Jacks and Evangeline get the ending that they deserve?
SPOILERS AHEAD
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I had such high hopes for A Curse for True Love, but gah! why so many chapters with Apollo’s point of view???? When I discovered that Stephanie Garber was writing this book with three different points of view I was so excited. But I feel like we hardly got any Jacks :(. I loved the banter between Evangeline and Jacks, but I didn’t feel as much angst or longing as I did when I read The Ballad of Never After. And yes, I do realize that this book is classified as YA, but I honestly felt like the spicy-ish scenes in the previous two books (the night Jacks was bit and then the hollow) were so much angstier/spicier than any of the scenes in A Curse for True Love.
I will still recommend this series and I’m so glad that Evangeline and Jacks got their happily ever after. But there were a lot of plot holes that were unanswered. Why does Jacks eat the apples? What about the last kiss that Jacks didn’t collect? Where was Luc? Is Evangeline still human and Jacks a fate? Why did Jacks become a fate? There were so many directions that this book could have gone to answer any of these questions and it felt like missed opportunities.
Maybe Stephanie is setting up Lala’s book. There was some delicious tension between Chaos and Lala and I hope that leads to somewhere. I just feel like I was left with a lot of questions – but maybe that’s how Stephanie intended for it to be?
Now that this series is complete…what will I obsess over now??
EvaJacks forever <3.
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