Once Upon A Broken Heart

If you like romance and fantasy, this is totally a book for you! Once Upon a Broken Heart was written by Stephanie Garber and was published in 2021. Once Upon a Broken Heart follows a young Evangeline Fox and her journey through the Magnificent North, hoping to find a new life and love.

The day that Evangeline was planning on telling her family she was in love with a boy named Luc was also the day that her heart was broken by that same boy. On the day of her step-sister Marisol’s wedding, Evangaline goes to the church of a Fate, the Prince of Hearts, to pray for her sister and her lover to cancel the wedding. While there she meets the actual Prince of Hearts (Jacks) whom she strikes a deal with to make sure that the wedding doesn’t happen. 

When arriving at the wedding she finds that Jacks actually sabotaged them getting married and froze Marisol, Luc, and all of the wedding guests in stone. The only way that she could save them was to become the hero and drink a goblet of poison to turn her into stone and unfreeze the rest of the wedding party. 

After a few weeks another Fate, who goes by the name of Poison, helps to break her curse. Evangeline wakes up to be declared a hero by the whole city for saving her family from the curse and soon gets an invitation to the palace by Empress Scarlet and her sister Donatella, who has some history with the Prince of Hearts. Scarlet and Donatella ask Evangeline if she would like to go to a magnificent ball in the Magnificent North on behalf of the crown. She quickly accepts the offer and brings her step-sister along with her. As soon as she gets to the Magnificent North a new story is being written, and it is about her. 

I really enjoyed reading this book and going through this story with the characters. The last book of the Once Upon a Broken Heart trilogy just came out in October and it was a spectacular ending to the series. The author Stephanie Garber also wrote the Caraval trilogy and I highly recommend reading that book trilogy first. It clears up some of the blank spots in the story and gives us some background on Jacks and the Fates as a whole. 

This book is the perfect read for anyone who likes fantasy and is trying to get into the romance genre or if you like romance and are trying to get into the fantasy genre. At some points it does play the romance side of things over a little bit, but other than that there are no other reasons not to read this book.