Once Upon a Broken Heart #3
Two villains, one girl, and a deadly battle for happily ever after.
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 in A Curse for True Love, the breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Once Upon A Broken Heart trilogy.
And finally we have it, the finale (see what I did there) of the Once Upon a Broken Heart series, the cousin of the Caraval series, coming to an end. As you can probably already tell by my rating, I was just a little bit disappointed how it all came to an end. I wish there was more explained, and in general the last book was a lot shorter than I thought it would be, for a book that would end a trilogy.
A Curse for True Love is the final part of the trilogy revolving around essentially what is the love story of Evangeline Fox, as she is torn between a real-life fairytale prince, or the feelings she gets whenever she sees Jacks, even though she remembers nothing about him. If she has always wanted her fairytale ending, why does her happily ever after seem like it’s not quite enough? And in that case, what is it that she’s forgotten but perhaps actually wants?
The story revolves around Evangeline, Apollo, and Jacks’ POVs. The story is still told in third person though, so each perspective merely offers more insight into the character’s thoughts. But otherwise, the story telling in that sense is quite seamless from chapter to chapter. I had no complaints there, and I think the story flowed quite well, making it a very easy read, and quite light in nature.
However, this is probably where my compliments end. I think my biggest complaint is about the story’s pacing. I kept reading and reading, wanting something exciting to happen and trigger events, but for about 60% of the book, it feels like things go in and endless circle with no direction. It was a bit frustrating to just follow no-memory Evangeline as she “struggles” with her feelings. I really liked a number of chapters near the end of the book, and thought it had exciting plot points. However, although the writing was persuasive as usual (good driving force), plot-wise, I really felt like not much happened for most of the book.
I wasn’t as annoyed with Evangeline this book with her sometimes petty antics (is that too mean?) but that’s probably due to the fact that her memories were gone most of the time. As usual she has her excellent “plans” and they work out basically as well as you’d expect any 17-year-old’s plan to work. Evangeline really didn’t seem to have much agency in this book, which gives the novel the feeling of being swept up in the plot. I expected a little bit more from our feisty head-strong protagonist, but I found this aspect to be lacking.
The relationships (romance!) were also lacking for me. Because of her memory loss, it felt like Evangeline’s relationships were also starting from zero again. Whereas I think everyone was really expecting a continuation, to me it really felt like a reversal, a reverting back to square one. This was a bit frustrating, but also slowed down the story. The memories take forever to return (spoiler?) and I think by the time that it did, there was hardly any time to build anything. Instead, we are thrown back into where book 2 left off, but by then, it just feels a bit off because it’s been so long.
There were some really interesting elements at the end, and more was revealed about different magical mechanisms, or more about the Valor family. However, none of it was really explored in depth, because by that time, it felt like most of the book was already over. The ramp up from about halfway through the book all the way to end was so steep, it really felt like there should have been another 200 pages to go before the ending. However, I felt like the ending was fairly abrupt, and suddenly all the problems were resolved and the story has ended without learning much more.
For me, it wasn’t exactly that the ending wasn’t satisfying per se, but I think the execution of it left much to be desired. It read a lot like a fairytale ending, where the climax and denouement come all at once, and then there’s a type of happily ever after ending. It just felt like there was so much mystery, intrigue, and suspense built up with Evangeline maybe being the girl from the prophecy, the Valors, the opening of the Arch, and I really craved more explanation than what was given.
Overall the story was fine and I got through it easily. I think I was just expecting more of this fantastical world, at least what I grew accustomed to during the Caraval series. The world was still really magical, and I personally would have appreciated a lot more information about the Valors than what we ended up seeing. Be careful with your expectations as you go through this finale.
Down the Rabbit Hole 