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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