Once Upon a Broken Heart Series Review: Is It Worth Reading?
- Aug 18, 2024
- 6 min read
Updated: 2 hours ago
Updated for 2026: This review has been refreshed with series-completion details, spice-level guidance, and answers to common reader questions.
Book Review: Stephanie Garber's Once Upon a Broken Heart Series — A Love Story That Will Steal Your Heart, Break It, and Then Stitch It Back Together
Some romantasy books give you butterflies.
Once Upon a Broken Heart gives you butterflies, rips your heart out, hands it to a morally questionable immortal, and then expects you to keep reading like everything is fine.
Naturally, I loved it.
Stephanie Garber's Once Upon a Broken Heart trilogy follows Evangeline Fox, a hopeless romantic who believes in true love and happy endings—even after love gives her every reason not to.
Then she makes a deal with Jacks, the Prince of Hearts.
And if there's one thing fantasy readers should know by now, it's that making bargains with beautiful immortals almost never ends well.
What follows is three books of curses, magical bargains, betrayal, fairy-tale whimsy, devastating slow-burn tension, and a romance that somehow manages to be both enchanting and emotionally cruel.
If you're wondering whether this series deserves a place on your TBR, here's what you should know.
Once Upon a Broken Heart: Series at a Glance
Author: Stephanie Garber
Genre: YA Fantasy / Romantasy
Main Story: 3 books
Romance: Very slow burn
Heat Level: Low; romance and tension take center stage rather than explicit intimacy
Overall Vibe: Whimsical fairy tale meets heartbreak, curses, dangerous bargains, and morally gray romance
Best For Readers Who Love: Yearning, magical worlds, fate versus choice, romantic tension, and heroes you're never completely sure you should trust
Main Trilogy:
Once Upon a Broken Heart
The Ballad of Never After
A Curse for True Love
Do You Need to Read Caraval First?
You can enter Once Upon a Broken Heart for Evangeline's story, but readers who have already read Stephanie Garber's Caraval trilogy will come in with more history surrounding Jacks and the world of the Fates.
So, no, I wouldn't let an unread Caraval trilogy stop you from picking this one up.
But if you're someone who loves having every crumb of character history before starting a new story, reading Caraval first may make Jacks even more interesting.
And trust me.
Jacks does not need help being interesting.
Major Tropes and Themes: A Rollercoaster of Emotions
If you're a fantasy-romance reader, there are plenty of familiar elements here—but Garber wraps them in such a strange, glittering fairy-tale world that they rarely feel ordinary.
1. Enemies-to-Lovers Energy
I hesitate to reduce Evangeline and Jacks to a neat trope because their relationship is messier than that.
They're allies.
They're adversaries.
They're occasionally using each other.
They're occasionally saving each other.
And they spend an agonizing amount of time circling feelings neither one seems particularly interested in discussing.
Whatever label you give them, the slow burn is very real.
2. Fate vs. Choice
This may be one of my favorite themes in the trilogy.
Evangeline wants desperately to believe in true love and happily ever after—but the series repeatedly asks whether love still means something when prophecy, curses, magic, and other people are constantly interfering with your choices.
Is something meant to be?
Or do we make it ours by choosing it?
That question runs underneath so much of Evangeline's journey.
3. Curses, Bargains, and Deadly Magic
Nothing comes free in this world.
Promises have consequences. Kisses can be dangerous. Bargains are rarely what they seem.
That constant sense that every beautiful thing might have teeth is one of the reasons the world works so well.
4. A Morally Gray Love Interest
Jacks.
Oh, Jacks.
The Prince of Hearts is manipulative, secretive, selfish, occasionally cruel, and almost always operating with information Evangeline doesn't have.
And yet...
There are those moments.
Those tiny glimpses beneath the armor where his actions reveal something his words never will.
Garber makes you spend a ridiculous amount of time asking the same questions Evangeline does:
Can he be trusted?
Is he capable of loving someone?
And perhaps more importantly...
What would loving someone cost him?
5. Fairy-Tale Whimsy With Sharp Edges
This world is beautiful, but it isn't safe.
There are magical arches, curses, Fates, enchanted places, impossible bargains, gorgeous clothing, and stories that feel pulled from some forgotten fairy tale.
But beneath all that sparkle is danger.
That's the combination that makes the atmosphere so addictive.
Evangeline Fox: From Hopeless Romantic to Survivor
Evangeline begins the trilogy believing fiercely in love.
Not because she's foolish, exactly.
Because she wants the world to contain happy endings.
And I think that's an important distinction.
Her optimism gets tested again and again throughout the series. She's manipulated. Betrayed. Hurt. Lied to. Forced to question people she trusted and truths she thought she understood.
But what I appreciated about her arc is that becoming stronger doesn't require her to become cynical.
By the final book, Evangeline is more cautious and more capable of fighting for herself—but some part of her still believes love can matter.
She doesn't survive by abandoning hope.
She learns to protect it.
Jacks: The Charming Scoundrel You Can't Help But Love
Then there's Jacks.
The Prince of Hearts enters every scene like he knows something no one else does—which, annoyingly, he usually does.
He's witty, arrogant, unpredictable, and emotionally locked down so tightly that you'll find yourself analyzing a look, a gesture, or a single line of dialogue for evidence that this man actually possesses feelings.
And that's part of the fun.
Jacks's development isn't delivered through long emotional confessions.
It's buried in choices.
Sacrifices.
Things he refuses to say.
Moments when his actions betray him.
Is he the hero?
The villain?
Something in between?
The answer: Most definitely yes.
The Romance: A Dance on the Edge of a Cliff
This is where the trilogy got me.
The romance between Evangeline and Jacks feels like watching two people dance on the edge of a cliff.
It's breathtaking.
Dangerous.
And you spend most of the time knowing someone is eventually going to fall.
Their relationship is built on bargains, lies, manipulation, reluctant trust, betrayal, and an attraction neither of them knows what to do with.
But beneath all of it is something increasingly difficult to dismiss.
The tension grows book by book, and because the series doesn't rely on explicit intimacy to create chemistry, the smallest moments can feel enormous.
A touch.
A look.
A choice.
A moment of vulnerability from someone who almost never allows himself to be vulnerable.
That's the kind of slow burn I love—the kind where the relationship becomes emotionally intimate long before either character knows how to admit what it has become.
Is Once Upon a Broken Heart Spicy?
If you're looking for explicit romantasy, this probably isn't the series you're looking for.
The romantic tension is intense, but the story remains relatively low on explicit sexual content. The emphasis is much more on yearning, kissing, emotional intimacy, danger, and the excruciating question of whether these two people are ever going to figure themselves out.
Personally, I don't think the story needed more.
The restraint is part of what makes the romance work.
If you're curious about the difference between low-spice, closed-door, fade-to-black, and open-door romance, I've also put together a full guide to Open Door vs. Closed Door Romance.
Who Should Read This Series?
I'd recommend Once Upon a Broken Heart if you love:
Painfully slow-burn romance
Morally gray love interests
Fairy-tale worlds with dangerous edges
Curses and magical bargains
Fate-versus-choice themes
Heroes who communicate through actions instead of feelings
Romantic tension without explicit spice
Stories that repeatedly make you whisper, "Jacks, what are you DOING?"
And if you loved The Cruel Prince, Stephanie Garber's own Caraval world, or romantasy that leans heavily into atmosphere and yearning, there's a very good chance you'll find something here to obsess over.
Final Thoughts: Worth Every Broken Heart
Once Upon a Broken Heart isn't perfect.
But I'm not sure I needed it to be.
What stayed with me wasn't simply the magic or the twists or even Jacks being...well, Jacks.
It was the idea underneath Evangeline's story:
That believing in love doesn't make someone weak.
That hope can survive betrayal.
And that sometimes a happy ending isn't something fate hands you.
Sometimes it's something you have to choose—and fight for.
If you love fantasy romance that gives you more yearning than spice, more danger than comfort, and a relationship that takes its sweet, agonizing time becoming what you desperately want it to become, I think this trilogy is absolutely worth the heartbreak.
Want More Romantasy You Can Binge Right Now?
If finishing A Curse for True Love leaves you staring at the wall wondering what to read next, I've rounded up 6 completed romantasy series you can binge straight through to the ending—including The Shepherd King, Kingdom of Lies, The Folk of the Air, and more.
If Forbidden Slow Burn Is Your Weakness...
Then I also have a story waiting for you.
A Song of Light and Shadow is the first book in my upcoming Vowsong Trilogy, a New Adult romantasy about a young woman who joins a holy military order to escape an unwanted marriage—and falls for the captain whose sacred vows forbid him from ever loving her.
It's a story about restraint, faith, impossible choices, and what happens when two people begin choosing each other long before either one is willing to call it love.
Because sometimes the most dangerous thing isn't falling in love.
It's realizing you already have.
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