Once Upon a Broken Heart
A woman makes a dark bargain with a paranormal being to save her shattered heart and reshape her destiny. The price is steep and the consequences spiral in unexpected directions. She discovers that magic and desire are far more complicated than she ever imagined.
Everything You Need to Know About Once Upon a Broken Heart
Evangeline finds her fiancé cheating on the night before their wedding, and she does what anyone desperate would do: she seeks out Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, a dangerous Fate who exists in the margins of the world. He's beautiful and terrible and bound to a curse, anyone he kisses will fall in love with him and die. She makes a deal: Jacks will help her stop the wedding in exchange for three favors, to be named later.
But Jacks doesn't help in normal ways. His solution is to seduce Evangeline with a kiss, binding her to love him for eternity while also making her expendable. Now she owes him three favors, she's in love with a man who literally can't love her back, and everything spirals from there. This is Garber's Caraval universe getting deliciously complicated.
Jacks is one of the most strong antiheroes in recent YA. He's cruel and self-serving and genuinely charming, you hate him and want him to succeed simultaneously. The worldbuilding of Garber's Caraval universe expands here, introducing Fates as a class of powerful, amoral beings who play with mortals for sport. The pacing is relentless; you can't put this down.
EvangeIine's perspective is clever, she's smart and resourceful, trying to outmaneuver someone who's centuries older and inherently more powerful. The romance is toxic (intentionally) in ways that feel thrilling rather than healthy. And Garber commits to the moral ambiguity. Nobody's pure here. That's the whole point.
Emotional manipulation and toxic relationships. Coercion (magical consent issues). Violence and death. Blood magic and dark themes. References to obsession and unhealthy love.
Jacks kisses Evangeline knowing it will bind her to love him eternally, making her his to dispose of when he's done. The first two favors she calls in are designed to trap him in situations of his own making, and the third favor is the real game-changer. Evangeline discovers that Jacks was once human and cursed by a Fate, making him a pawn like everyone else. The book ends with Evangeline still bound to him, still in love against her will, but aware that his curse is also a prison. There's no resolution, just a new status quo where both of them are trapped by the other.
Essential for Caraval fans, this expands the universe significantly and sets up future books. For readers who love morally gray romance and don't need their love interests to be good people. If you liked A Court of Thorns and Roses for the toxic-dynamic appeal and the fae mythology, this hits similar notes. Not for you if you need relationship dynamics to model healthy behavior or if you want your protagonists to make objectively good decisions.
First book of a new series in the Caraval universe (this is not a Caraval direct sequel; it's a spinoff with new characters). Can technically be read standalone, but knowing the Caraval books adds context for the magic system and how Fates operate. Book two is coming, and cliffhangers persist.
Reader Reviews
No reader reviews yet. Be the first!
