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Review: Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

Book Review and Content, Fantasy, Romance, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , , , ,
Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

Once Upon a Broken Heart (Once Upon a Broken Heart #1)
Stephanie Garber
Flatiron Books
Published September 28, 2021

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About Once Upon a Broken Heart

How far would you go for happily ever after?

For as long as she can remember, Evangeline Fox has believed in true love and happy endings… until she learns that the love of her life will marry another.

Desperate to stop the wedding and to heal her wounded heart, Evangeline strikes a deal with the charismatic but wicked Prince of Hearts. In exchange for his help, he asks for three kisses, to be given at the time and place of his choosing.

But after Evangeline’s first promised kiss, she learns that bargaining with an immortal is a dangerous game—and that the Prince of Hearts wants far more from her than she’d pledged. He has plans for Evangeline, plans that will either end in the greatest happily ever after or the most exquisite tragedy…

My Review

It’s been a while since I read the Caraval series, but I enjoyed them, so Once Upon a Broken Heart has been on my reading list since it came out. I hadn’t planned on waiting until the whole series was published before reading them, but I’m honestly not sorry I did. It took a few weeks to get the audiobook version of this one from my library, but they do have the whole series, so I’m now back in line for the second one.

I liked this book. It has some of the same things I liked about Caraval, but it has a more open world rather than the more closed-circle experience of that trilogy. It’s got unpredictable, sometimes brutal magic and a brooding, unattainable love interest. It’s got the sweet, starry-eyed girl at the center who has more power than she realizes but whose ability to believe in something may prove to be her greatest strength.

One of the things I liked best was the relationship between Evangeline and her step-sister, Marisol. I wish that a little more of the story had centered around them, actually. They have a tenuous relationship that, for a long time, Evangeline struggles to truly understand. She wants a relationship with her, but worries she can’t trust her, and her guilt over turning Marisol and her entire wedding party to stone definitely interferes.

Oh. So there’s a moment late in the book that I won’t spoil, but I literally sat there saying, “Don’t do it. Nope. Don’t!. You’re about to get Tess of the D’Urberville’d*. Don’t do it!”

Anyway. So I knew I was pretty invested in the story when I was literally shouting at the recording. Haha!

There were a couple of moments that I kind of just had to go with. For instance, at one point, a super-hungry vampire bites someone, but instead of feeding, they inject the person with venom. It seemed very bizarre that they didn’t try to feed since there had been this whole buildup about how hungry this vampire was. But nope. The bite just injected venom for some reason. Maybe that will be explained more later?

For the most part, though, I was absolutely carried away with this wild magical story. I’m looking forward to book two in the series.

*If you haven’t read Tess of the D’Urbervilles, there’s a part in the book in which someone confesses a dark secret to her. It’s a person she has been keeping her own awful secret from (something she feels terrible about, but which isn’t even her fault). So they confess, and Tess is like, oh, whew, you’ll understand my secret then. So she confesses, and nope. It’s not okay. Not at all. I really hated that book.

Content Notes

Recommended for Ages 14 up.

Representation
Main characters are white.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Mild profanity used infrequently.

Romance/Sexual Content
Kissing between boy and girl. Evangeline spends the night curled up in a boy’s lap as part of a medical recovery.

Spiritual Content
A group of immortal Fates have limited special abilities. If a human finds the chapel of a Fate, they can pray to them and make a bargain. The Fate may choose to help them but will ask for something in return.

Violent Content
Situations of peril. Evangeline hears about a wolf attack that leaves a boy horribly scarred. A boy dies, apparently from some kind of poison. Someone poisons a girl. A large number of vampires bite people. Someone ties up another person and threatens to torture or kill them.

Drug Content
Evangeline drinks wine at a social event.

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Review: The Fearless Traveler’s Guide to Wicked Places by Peter Begler

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Fearless Traveler’s Guide to Wicked Places
Peter Begler
Capstone Books for Young Readers
Available March 1, 2017

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When a skull-shaped cloud kidnaps Nell’s mother and turns her into a bird, she and her brothers vow to get their mother back. To do this, they must find a powerful Fearless Traveler and persuade him to take them to a land of nightmares. Once there, they will have to make the dangerous journey to see Ravenhead, the only Dreamer who can undo the curse and return Nell’s mother to her real form. Along the way, Nell and her brother battle nightmares both outside and inside themselves. The only weapons they possess are the wisdom in the Fearless Traveler’s handbook and the truths they learn about themselves.

This story reminded me a little bit of The Thickety books by J. A. White in its lyrical prose and scary-whimsical storytelling. I liked the voices of each character—Nell and her brother George especially. George cracked me up with his snarky, arrogant-but-cute commentary. I loved the message about mothers and their connection to their children. Nell is told over and over that even if she’s able to transform her mother back to her human form, she’ll have no memory of Nell or her brothers. Nell refuses to believe this. She clings to her mom’s earlier words that a mother cannot forget her children, and that her body becomes the memory of them. The whole story has themes like this—where belief in things that are true trumps fears we hold. I liked that message.

One of the things I struggled with a little bit is the fact that for much of the journey, Nell and her brothers depend on an adult to fight their battles and help them through some obstacles. Especially in a story with a female lead, to have a male adult character taking the hero’s role sort of grates on me a bit. It feels like a statement that says she couldn’t do this on her own. I don’t think the author was trying to say that, but the story came close to feeling that way to me.

However, by about the halfway mark, Nell leaves her adult mentor behind and begins a journey alone. Soon she’s joined by a male friend who takes on a bit of a leading role as far as the fighting goes. Again, I’m not sure if this was deliberate, but I felt like Nell deserved a little more of the spotlight instead of being pushed into more of a support role yet again. I also kept waiting for the song shared between Nell and her mom to become a significant element. At several points it was clear that Nell and her mother’s relationship was special and it seemed like a song was part of their special bond, but that didn’t end up becoming a part of the story’s resolution. Maybe something saved for book two?

Overall, I really enjoyed the writing in this book and the truly unique story-world. I thought the characters were really fun and I couldn’t help investing in them and hoping they won the day. If you liked A Path Begins by J. A. White or Grayling’s Song by Karen Cushman, you should definitely pick up this book.

Recommended for Ages 8 up.

Cultural Elements
Nell and her brothers are white. The witches come from Iceland.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
None.

Romance/Sexual Content
None.

Spiritual Content
Nell sees things on the people around her. Sometimes their faces change to that of an animal. She refers to this as seeing their “inner animal” and can dispel the vision by saying her name out loud.

Evil witches capture human mothers and intend to kill them as part of a ritual. Sometimes the witches are referred to as demons or in one instance a succubus.

Nell and her brothers cross over to another realm controlled by Dreamers who possess powerful magic. One of the battles they fight is one of transformation. Nell and her brothers transform into animals (their dream selves) at random and inconvenient times. Nell’s dream self is a fox who desperately wants to devour the yellow bird Nell must protect. Nell and the boys learn to combat the change by forcing themselves to remember who they really are. The story places a lot of emphasis on this idea—that there is power in clinging to truths like this or the Fearless Traveler’s motto.

Violent Content
A frightening cloud which sometimes looks like wolves and other times looks like a skull seems to be kidnapping women from Nell’s town. Nell fights a creepy octopus/wolf-like critter and takes on a team of creepy witches. Battle lines form between Nell and the Dreamers and the Witches and their allies, including some scary clowns.

Drug Content
None.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

 

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Review: Season of the Witch by Mariah Fredericks

Book Review and Content, Paranormal, Young Adult/Teen 12-18, , , ,

Season of the Witch
Mariah Fredericks
Schwartz & Wade Books
Published October 8, 2013

Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Goodreads

When she was a little girl in a playground game, Toni learned about princesses and witches. Though being a princess is glamorous, it’s the witch, Toni decides, who has the real power. Later, after the popular Chloe and her entourage make Toni’s high school life a living hell, Toni joins fellow exile Cassandra and performs a spell to stop Chloe and her antics. Only, the results are far worse than Toni expected. And when Cassandra chooses Toni’s best friend as the next target of her wrath, Toni knows it’s up to her to stop the witch from putting another princess under her spell.

While the princess and witch themes are thought-provoking and twist together nicely in the story’s resolution, the occult experimentation may be too creepy for some readers. The creative conclusion, which focuses on solidarity and compassion, is the greatest strength of this story. Through the prism of the fairy tale, Fredericks explores the power of hate and ill will versus the power of love, compassion, and understanding, weaving them into a powerful anti-bullying message.

Profanity/Crude Language Content
Extreme word choice, moderate frequency.

Sexual Content
Toni finds herself in a mess of trouble with Chloe because over the summer, while Chloe and her boyfriend Oliver were taking a break, Toni and Oliver began an intimate relationship. No detailed accounts of their time together make it into the pages of the story, but Tony recollects that she’s been in several short-term, intense relationships. There’s little emotional fallout for Toni, and even when her recent relationship with Oliver reaches its disappointing end, Toni is more angry that he won’t defend her to Chloe than hurt that she’s being dumped so easily. For a girl who’s barely recovering from knowledge of her father’s affair with a young woman, this lack of emotion in Toni seems too convenient and highly suspect.

Spiritual Content
Toni and Cassandra read spells from Cassandra’s Book of Shadows. They practice casting a hex on other girls using a focused, mean gaze. Together, they follow a spell which includes blood in order to place a curse on a girl who antagonizes Toni. It’s vivid and pretty creepy.

Violence
None.

Drug Content
References to parties at which teens were drinking alcohol. One drunk teen is killed in an accident.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest review.

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