Two Villains, One Girl, And A Deadly Battle For Happily Ever After.

I recently finished reading A Curse For True Love by Stephanie Garber. This is book #3 in the Once Upon A Broken Heart Trilogy.

To read my review for Once Upon A Broken Heart follow this link --> https://thebooklover45.wixsite.com/the-book-lover/post/my-unbroken-heart (after my re-read my rating has gone up to 3.75/5)

To read my review of The Ballad of Never After follow this link --> https://thebooklover45.wixsite.com/the-book-lover/post/not-every-love-is-meant-to-be (after my re-read my rating has gone up to 4.25/5)

*POSSIBLE SPOILER ALERT*

  Rating: 4/5 stars

"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."

The book we finally deserve after that horrendous ending in The Ballad of Never After (I loved that ending so much despite how much pain it caused me) and it is finally here.

The Plot

Hm...where to begin. The beginning of this book was actually a little slow. Mainly because Evangeline was relearning everything after her memories were taken, and while I was lowkey stressed out, everything was jumping along pretty smoothly.

When Apollo's first chapter came around, I literally rolled my eyes because I forgot that he even had chapters in this book. But, I was thankfully gifted a Jacks chapter a few chapters later, and that completely lifted my mood. In said chapter, we get THIS absolute gem of a quote that made me choke: “He'd never understood why someone would watch another person sleep...until her.” screaming.

Things started to pick back up right after Jacks's chapter, which I cannot find as a coincidence because Jacks just makes everything better.

This book felt a lot more romance heavy than the others. There was just this super weird vibe around the book, as if it had lost all the magic. Don't get me wrong, I loved the romance, but one of the reasons I love Caraval and OUABH so much was because of the magic, and this book just seemed to lack it.

The epilogue killed me. Not because it's cute, because it wasn't, but because of the last line- "Other stories were brewing in the Magnificent North." What other stories Stephanie? I will need them asap thank you. It did feel a little bittersweet though, because the next stories probably won't be connected to any of the main characters from this series and Caraval.

The Characters

Evangeline's a good main character because she makes....semi-rational decisions? Who am I kidding, Evangeline is such an idiot sometimes. She wasn't as much of an idiot in this book as she was in the last one, but she kept taking unnecessary risks that had me smacking my forehead because she could literally die. Her main character role saved her though.

Jacks. Prince of Hearts. Archer. Jacks of the Hollow. I will be the Fox to his Archer any day, where can I find the signup sheet? In all seriousness, I love Jacks so much. I used to hate him in the Caraval series when I first read it (LOOK it was only because I liked Tella and Legend together, all right?). Jacks is a contender for king of morally grey characters, though I will be honest: I liked him more when he was mean to Evangeline than in the end and they were all lovey-dovey.

Apollo deserved every single last thing that happened to him and Aurora can go eat rocks in a well.

The Relationship

As I said before, this book was super romance-heavy, with so much denial, pining, angst, and longing. Despite all of this, I still wish there was more magic.

The forbidden lovers was so well done. Every time Jacks kept denying her out of love for her made me die and then buried me underground and put a headstone above my grave. The ending brought me back to life though, so I'm all good now.

Overall, this book was as good as I expected it to be, I just wish it had exceeded my expectations though!

Check out A Curse for True Love, and find out what really happens when you kiss the prince of hearts.

Happy reading :)