Q U I C K S T A T S
Characters: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Setting: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Writing style: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Overall rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
T H E B O O K
// Content Warning: Blood / Death / Death of parent / Emotional abuse / Grief / Murder / Violence //
Publisher: Flatiron Books
Age rating: 15+
Genre(s): Fantasy
Pub date: 28/09/2021
P R E M I S E
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….
M Y R E V I E W
↬ PRE-THOUGHTS
The cover gives me Jack vibes and I fucking love it. The fancy swirly things speak for itself.
↬ PLOT
Once Upon a Broken Heart is a spin off series from the original trilogy (one of my all-time favourite books), Caraval which I recommend reading before this one because there's mild spoilers in this book.
The protagonist, Evangeline Fox finds herself 'praying' to the fates and manages to summon the prince of hearts who's none other than Jacks because her one true love is getting married to... wait for it... her sister. After sealing a deal with Jacks, which may or may not involve three kisses (it's not what you think, I promise). However, after the first fated kiss, she begins to realise that he in fact wants something far more dangerous and she's determined to find out all his secrets before he carries out any possible scheme of his.
↬ WRITING AND SETTING
The novel was incredibly fast paced and I was hooked until I realised, I had completed the book in less than an hour during online school. Are you seriously telling me that I completed this book a few hours after its release and have to wait like a year for the sequel? What? Why? What have I, a mostly nice person, done to deserve this treatment?
As always, the writing was flowery and absolutely gorgeous (can you describe writing like that?) and it deserves to be appreciated more than this one-line paragraph I spent hours editing but I have simply no words to describe it and therefore you are being forced to go through these lines of nothing until the end of the paragraph.
↬ CHARACTERS
I swear Jacks had a glow up; I used to picture him as a whiny ten-year-old who didn't get his turn on the Xbox but now... holy heckle. But now, he's actually the prince of hearts, like actually the prince of hearts. Now, he's Jacks.
Evangeline was alright; she shared *many* traits common amongst most YA fantasy protagonists such as being naive when it suits them and being stubborn for absolutely no reason, but she felt authentic. I don't know how to explain this because I'm literally trying up the draft I had, unfortunately, written at 1 in the morning and I have no idea what my thoughts were. I was smart enough to note down my theories though, for example (no spoilers don't worry) Evangeline might become a fate or something close to one. Oh my god, what if she becomes the villain? I've got more but they're all spoilers so I can't unfortunately include them all here, but feel free to message me on Instagram (or any social media really) to start a conversation!
Of course, Stephanie Garber doesn't miss the slow burn. Baby when I said I love slow burn, I didn't mean heavy sexual tension for the entirety of the book and not publishing the sequel until next year which I pray has something satisfactory and not the usual breaking my heart by killing one of them off (shit, another theory: what if she kills Jacks and has Evangeline become the princess of hearts?) or having them end up with other people I definitely don't ship them with.
Me trying to remember his age:
↬ CONCLUSION
Pros: Scarlett made a cameo
Cons: Vampires, Julian does not appear :(
Overall rating: 5/5
T R O P E S
Enemies to lovers (kinda?)
S I M I L A R B O O K S
Little Thieves by Margaret Owen
↬ Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...↬ Once upon a time, there was a horrible girl...
Vanja Schmidt knows that no gift is freely given, not even a mother's love--and she's on the hook for one hell of a debt. Vanja, the adopted goddaughter of Death and Fortune, was Princess Gisele's dutiful servant up until a year ago. That was when Vanja's otherworldly mothers demanded a terrible price for their care, and Vanja decided to steal her future back... by stealing Gisele's life for herself.
The real Gisele is left a penniless nobody while Vanja uses an enchanted string of pearls to take her place. Now, Vanja leads a lonely but lucrative double life as princess and jewel thief, charming nobility while emptying their coffers to fund her great escape. Then, one heist away from freedom, Vanja crosses the wrong god and is cursed to an untimely end: turning into jewels, stone by stone, for her greed.
Vanja has just two weeks to figure out how to break her curse and make her getaway. And with a feral guardian half-god, Gisele's sinister fiancé, and an overeager junior detective on Vanja's tail, she'll have to pull the biggest grift yet to save her own life.
B O O K S M E N T I O N E D
Caraval by Stephanie Garber
A D D I T I O N A L R E S O U R C E S
F I N D M E
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