Series Review: Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber

Series Rating: 3 / 5

Once Upon a Broken Heart: 3.5 / 5

The Ballad of Never After: 3.25 / 5

A Curse for True Love: 2.25 / 5

The Once Upon a Broken Heart series is a charming and romantic fairytale, following Evangeline Fox, as she journeys to the Magnificent North and navigates romance and the occasional murder mystery. The world-building is idyllic and fanciful, albeit a bit surface-level at times. From the first book, it's clear this is a very plot-driven series, and I was engaged in its storytelling but felt it could have benefited from stronger character development and a more satisfying conclusion. 

At times, this series reads more like a children’s book, and I likely would’ve enjoyed it more had I read it when I was a tween/teen. This is largely due to Evangeline’s overwhelming naivety in the first novel, which often made it difficult to see her as a 17-year old girl rather than a much younger protagonist. Evangeline comes off as a somewhat formulaic character, who lacks depth, proper development of her personality, and understanding of her background. The same goes for Jacks: he’s mainly just brooding and flirtatious. Evangeline and Jacks find themselves quickly infatuated with each other but with little depth in their personalities or real familiarity with each other, which made me question the authenticity of their relationship/chemistry. We witness Evangeline come a little bit more into her own throughout the series but still never felt that emotional connection or understanding of her. 

-Spoilers Below-

Jacks evolved into a slightly more interesting character in that his unique and unfortunate circumstances truly shape and almost overtake his entire personality and decision-making -- he avoids love at all costs, understandably so. After experiencing so much death of loved ones because of himself, he becomes so fearful of it to the point that he is willing to give up his life and identity not only to save Evangeline but also save himself from further pain. I would’ve been interested to see more into his psyche and background as by the end, he was still a bit of an enigma and more could’ve been explored (e.g. how did he even become a fate?). 

Additionally, I felt the series began to drop off by the third book, A Curse for True Love. Evangeline, having all her memories wiped of basically everything that the series covers, attempts to navigate and regain these memories. It was intriguing initially to be reading from the perspective of someone that we as the reader have more context than (as it’s normally the other way around in novels), but this quickly became repetitive and a bit tedious as we kept having information we already knew about thrown back at us. The overall series potentially could’ve been more interesting had it started with the third book: Evangeline and the reader are equally confused and unknowledgeable about what was happening, while the memories and world could have slowly been unravelled/revealed to the reader to make for a more suspenseful tale.

The story finally builds up to its climax: Evangeline and Jacks sharing a kiss and what the aftermath would pan out to be. Although this was predictable from the moment we were introduced to these characters, the mystery lay in the planning/logic behind Evangeline being able to survive his kiss. Disappointingly, there was really no logic or explanation, although this had been the key underlying problem throughout the series. The story seemed to imply that it was true love’s kiss that broke his curse; but since this possibility was never established within the world, it felt confusing and lacked impact. The conclusion of this series failed to address unanswered fundamental questions and continue other characters’ stories (e.g., Tiberius, Luc, the repercussions of opening the Valory Arch that were never addressed, etc.). Although I enjoyed the fairytale-like world this series built and was compelled to follow the story to its conclusion, I was disappointed by its inconsistency in failing to build to a satisfying climax, resolving key plot points, and properly creating multifaceted characters.