A Curse for True Love

I picked up A Curse for True Love because The Ballad of Never After ended with Evangeline married and memory wiped, and I needed to know if Garber could land the trilogy without cheating. Stephanie Garber published it with Flatiron Books in 2023, a 400 page third book in the Once Upon a Broken Heart series with ISBN 9781250851208. Evangeline Fox wakes married to Prince Apollo with no memory of Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, who loves her and must kill her husband to free her. Two villains, one girl, a battle for happily ever after. It is lush, twisty, and openly romantic about curses. I finished it in a weekend, annoyed at some choices and moved by others, which is about right for Garber.

Evangeline opens the book in a fairy tale that feels wrong. Married to handsome Apollo in a northern castle, adored by court, wearing dresses that sparkle, forgetting how she got here. She has gaps. A scar. A fox shaped void. Dreams of a boy with golden eyes and sharp smile. Apollo is kind until he is not, attentive until possessive, loving until he orders her not to ask about past. That slow wrongness is Garber at her best. Ballrooms with too sweet wine. Servants who flinch. Mirrors that show someone else. Evangeline, who believes in true love fiercely, senses her happy ending was bought without her consent. She is right. The price was her memories of Jacks.

Jacks, Prince of Hearts, Fate who feeds on heartbreak and cannot love without killing what he loves, drives the book from shadows. In earlier books he bargained for kisses, saved Evangeline, doomed her, saved again. Here he is desperate and selfless in ways that should be impossible for his kind. He remembers every kiss. She remembers none. He watches her dance with Apollo and aches without feeding, which for a Fate is like starving while full. Garber writes his longing with restraint that suits him. Short sentences. Bitten lips. Hands in pockets to avoid touching. Fans who love morally gray boys will swoon. Readers tired of brooding immortals may sigh. I swooned more than sighed, though I noticed the pattern. Pain as proof of love is a trope. Garber almost interrogates it by making Jacks pain literal poison. Almost.

Apollo as husband villain complicates. He is not a monster at first. He loves Evangeline after his fashion, which means owning her story. He paid a witch to erase her memories to keep her. He believes happiness justifies theft. Is that love or control. The book says control wearing love's clothes. A scene where he brings Evangeline her favorite pastry while forbidding letters from friends captures him. Sweetness as leash. Apollo also fears Jacks rightly. Jacks plans to kill him. That mutual murder plot gives the middle real tension. Who will strike first. Evangeline caught between a husband who erases and a Fate who kills. Neither option looks like safety. Good. Fairy tales should scare.

Memory and kisses

Memory loss drives plot and theme. Evangeline lost memories of Jacks as price for her wedding. To regain them she must do impossible tasks, open locked doors, drink truths, trade stories. Garber uses fairy tale logic where names hold power and doors demand prices. A library where books bleed. A well where echoes answer. A ball where masks remember faces wearers forget. Those set pieces delight. They also ask what identity is without memory. Is Evangeline still herself if she forgets Jacks. She believes in true love as idea, but cannot feel it for the right person. That gap hurts more than any curse. Knowing should love without feeling love. Anyone who has forgotten why a song mattered will get it. The facts remain. The ache left.

Kisses structure the series and return here with weight. Three kisses bargained in book one. More stolen and given since. Each kiss cost and healed. Now Evangeline must decide who to kiss with full knowledge that kisses with Jacks can kill and kisses with Apollo bind. Garber writes kisses as negotiations rather than rewards. Who leans. Who permits. Who remembers after. A scene where Evangeline asks Jacks to describe their first kiss so she can decide if she wants it back reverses typical romance. Story before touch. Consent as narrative. I liked that move a lot. It respects a heroine who lost history. Tell me, then I choose. Do not kiss me into remembering. Tell me first.

Marisol and other friends provide grounding. Marisol, Evangeline's stepsister once rival now sister in complicated ways, arrives with warnings and cakes. She remembers what Evangeline forgot and does not know how to tell without breaking her. Their scenes balance court intrigue with sister talk. Hair brushing. Dress lacing. Whispered doubts. Those domestic beats keep magic from floating. LaLa, vampire? Actually fortune teller with secrets, and Chaos, another Fate with jokes, add lore and humor. Chaos steals scenes with flippant cruelty that hides care. If ensemble crowds you, skim Chaos banter. It repeats. Heart stays with Evangeline and Jacks anyway.

The Magnificent North as setting shines in winter. Ice palaces. Night markets selling memories. Foxes as omens. Garber's prose is perfumed and pink, with scents and sweets in every paragraph. Strawberry, vanilla, apple. Some readers adore immersion. Some find it cloying. I split. At midnight with tea, I loved. At noon with headache, I skimmed descriptions of dresses. Accept the style as part of contract. Garber does not do spare. She does sparkle with teeth. If you want lean fairy tales, pick another author. If you want sugar with blood, stay.

Villains and prices

Two villains structure the book, Apollo and the witch who erased memories, with Jacks as villain lover caught between. The witch, with motives involving lost love and ledger books, gets a backstory that almost redeems and then does not. She believes all love ends in debt and collects accordingly. Is she wrong. Partly. Garber lets her argue well. Every happy ending in these books cost someone. Evangeline's first wedding cost Jacks pain. Her second cost her memory. Her possible third will cost blood. That accounting theme gives froth weight. Nothing free. Choose what to pay. The witch forces choices rather than stealing without terms, which makes her more honest than Apollo who hides prices. Honest villainy versus lying love. Pick your poison. Evangeline picks neither blindly by the end, which is growth.

Jacks killing Apollo plan raises moral questions the book partly ducks. Murder as rescue. Is it okay to kill a memory thief to free a victim. The book says yes with little handwringing because Apollo tries to kill Jacks first and proves cruel in other ways. Self defense plus defense of another covers a lot. Still, I wanted Evangeline to sit longer with wanting a man dead for her sake. She does briefly, praying in a chapel to no god in particular, asking if wishing death makes her wicked. That prayer scene is brief and good. More of that ambivalence would deepen the finale. As written, the plot moves too fast for guilt to stick. Stab, gasp, move to next ball. Fairy tale pace excuses, but not fully.

The finale, which I will outline without naming survivors, involves a battle at a wedding, a curse broken by true love that is not a kiss alone but a choice with witnesses, and a mirror that shows true stories. It satisfies without surprising much. If you guessed who must die and who must remember, you are likely right. Pleasure comes from how Garber stages reveals with doors, keys, and apples rather than from shock. A puzzle box ending for puzzle box series. Some readers wanted bigger subversion. I wanted competence and got it. Threads tie. Kisses count. Prices paid. Happily ever after with scars. Good enough for fairy tale closure, open enough for Mirror of Infinite Endings teasers.

What sparkles and what sticks

What sparkles is voice. Garber writes like a friend telling a story at a sleepover, gasping at her own twists. Short chapters. Cliffhangers. Questions to reader. What would you pay for love. She trusts teens with moral mess. Bargains have fine print. Heroes lie. Villains grieve. That trust respects young readers. My teen niece annotated margins with arguments. Yes, kiss him. No, run. That engagement is success. Books that invite shouting last.

What sticks is repetition. Three books of balls, bargains, and memory wipes blur. A Curse repeats beats from Caraval and earlier OUABH. Another dress. Another bargain. Another apple. At 400 pages in the Flatiron edition, it could have been 350. I skimmed one market scene that echoed book two. Fans will forgive because comfort is part of appeal. New readers should not start here. Start with Once Upon a Broken Heart, then Ballad, then this. The series rewards loyalty more than newcomers. Accept and binge in order. Do not judge this volume alone for originality. Judge the trilogy arc. It lands.

Representation is light. Evangeline is white, Jacks is pale Fate, court is largely fair and thin. Queer side characters exist but stay background. Disability barely appears. Readers needing mirrors may find it thin. Garber improves found family warmth but not breadth. Name the gap while enjoying what is present. Fairy tales should belong to all. These still belong mostly to pretty thin girls in dresses. Hopeful that Mirror widens. Here, note and continue if dresses delight you. If not, pick another fairy tale retelling with broader cast. No shame.

Who it is for

Read it if you finished Ballad and need ending, if you like Jacks and Evangeline banter with high stakes, if you like fairy tale logic with prices and doors. It is Once Upon a Broken Heart book three, after Once Upon a Broken Heart and The Ballad of Never After. Do not start here. Content includes violence, death, blood, sexual situations with kissing and innuendo, language. No graphic sex. Curses involve self harm imagery with magic prices. Suitable for ages thirteen and up who handled earlier books.

Facts to cite are simple. First published October 24, 2023 by Flatiron Books. Hardcover runs 400 pages with ISBN 9781250851208. Author Stephanie Garber wrote it as conclusion to OUABH trilogy, spinoff from Caraval. Series Once Upon a Broken Heart order three. Tags that fit are fantasy, young adult, romance, magic, fairy tales.

I closed it satisfied and a little sticky, like after cotton candy that hid a needle and then gave a real ring. Evangeline chooses memory with pain over happiness without truth. Jacks chooses to love without feeding to death. Apollo chooses control and loses. Those choices feel clear after fog. True love here is not feeling alone. It is remembering, telling, and paying openly. Keep your kisses counted. Keep your doors locked unless you mean to open. And if a Fate offers three kisses for a wedding, ask price in writing first. Evangeline would tell you. Listen to her.

Reading the trilogy as one

What helps this finale land is reading all three Once Upon a Broken Heart books close together, which I did over two weeks. Book one sets bargains, book two deepens North, book three cashes debts. Viewed together, Evangeline grows from girl who believes in happy endings to woman who builds one with costs listed. That growth is slow and uneven. She repeats mistakes, trusts wrong princes, forgets lessons about Jacks. That repetition annoyed me in book two and made sense after book three. People do not learn love in one lesson. They circle. Garber allows circling without shaming. Each loop adds a scar and a skill. By the 400 page Flatiron finale with ISBN 9781250851208, Evangeline reads contracts before signing, asks who benefits, keeps a friend nearby when bargaining. Small changes. Real ones. Track them across volumes rather than judging one scene. Arc over episode. She arrives.

Jacks arc similarly rewards distance. In Caraval he was chaos. In book one he was predator with manners. In book two he was ally with hunger. Here he is lover learning restraint. That slow humanizing could have softened him into generic boyfriend. Garber keeps edges. He still thinks in trades. He still hungers when Evangeline bleeds. He chooses not to feed, but choice costs visibly. Hands shake. Eyes gold too long. That cost keeps him Fate rather than man in costume. Love does not cure nature. It disciplines. That message will help readers tired of love fixes monsters tropes. Love does not fix. Practice does, daily, with relapses. Jacks relapses in thought if not act. Noticing and stopping is the romance. Watch for stops, not just kisses. Stops are love in this world.

For Jacks fans and skeptics

If you love Jacks, this book feeds. Hair falling, smiles sharp, coats blue, apples offered. Garber knows her audience and delivers scenes to underline. A dance where he remembers steps she forgot. A door he holds while she decides. Good swoon with consent built in. If you are skeptical of tortured immortal boys, the book still works if you read Jacks as addiction metaphor rather than ideal. Craving that harms beloved, trying to abstain, failing in mind, succeeding in act with help. That reading gives depth beyond brooding. Evangeline as both beloved and boundary. She loves and leaves room to leave if he feeds. That boundary keeps her from victim role. Love with exit. Important. Teach that to teens who romanticize persistence. Persistence without respect is Apollo. Jacks learns difference. Apollo never does. That contrast is the book's clearest lesson. Learn it faster than Evangeline did. Choose the one who lets you remember, even if remembering hurts. Memory with pain beats happiness with edits. Every time.