A Curse For True Love

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Well, I’m now back to where I was many months ago when I did not have a ‘To-Read’ pile on my bedside table. I have just closed the cover on the conclusion to Stephanie Garber’s Once Upon a Broken Heart trilogy and I’m sure that already, someone somewhere in the film industry is working to secure the movie rights.

Evangeline’s life is a living fairytale. She is married to a handsome prince, lives in a legendary castle, and will one day be queen of the Magnificent North. She only wishes she could remember how this happened. Evangeline’s memories are gone, but Prince Apollo has a put a name to the culprit: Lord Jacks. But after some attempts on her life, Evangeline is not so sure that everything is as it seems. Did Apollo really come back from the dead to be with her? If so, where is the love she should feel for him? As her heart and her head begin to conflict with one another, Apollo determines to ensure that Evangeline remains unaware of the price paid for this happy ending. There’s only one way: killing Jacks the Prince of Hearts.

With more secrets festering, more obstacles appearing, and the occupants of the central love triangle being segregated, Garber has written the chapters with the omniscient narrator following the three central protagonists: Evangline, Apollo, and Jacks. It’s really the best way to ensure that the book retains its power to make the reader compulsively page-turn. With her memories gone, a book that solely followed Evangeline would be boring/almost impossible and getting to see what Apollo and Jacks are doing as well as understand their reasoning adds more depth to their characters, not to mention we get to see more of the newly awakened ancient family of the Valors.

This method of storytelling is also perfect for this climactic third act because a lot of the ‘action’ is character-driven rather than event-driven, as its predecessors were. With the quest narrative to open the Valory Arch complete, the characters now are driven by their own desires to find the truth, bring more to their story, and turn away from heartache.

Garber continues to lean heavily into the cliched fairytale setting and quest for true love, almost to the point of making a mockery of the genre. However, despite her saccharine prose and syrupy scenes of castle life, she manages to retain a sense of sincerity and celebration of the fairytale power of love, thus appealing to all the sooky romantics (like me) that make up her readership.

Image credit: YALLFest

While it sometimes feels like the pace is disjointed – a side effect of the narrator following three different protagonists- A Curse For True Love is a romantic and satisfactory ending to a very over-the-top and aggressively epic fairytale love story. I absolutely can see myself rereading this series in a couple of months’ time. The Once Upon a Broken Heart series is a must-have for romantics, lovers of fairytales, and enthusiasts of YA fiction.

Author: Stephanie Garber, 2023

Published: Hodder and Stoughton, Great Britain, 2023

A Curse For True Love is the conclusion to Stephanie Garber’s Once Upon a Broken Heart trilogy, following Once Upon a Broken Heart and The Ballad of Never After.