Once Upon a Broken Heart

4.5⭐️ this book was a good surprise for me as I didn’t expect liking it… now I want to finds this series… love this main male character… added to my favs list :)

i love my manipulative, obsessed, jealous, cunning, murderous, apple-eating, blond villain

Too Much fantasy for my type

YES YES YES THE PRINCE OF HEARTS!!!!!!! Watch me reading this book without reading the last one in the caraval trilogy

The book is slow paced and it doesn't give me that exciting feeling I felt when reading the Caraval. Evageline is naive and annoying and honestly I don't feel like she lives up to Scarlet and Tella. It's kind of funny, everyone was trashing on the first book of the Carval Trilogy and I loved that book the most and this book is raved about so much and this is my least favorite Stephanei Garber's book I've read so far.

The characters were amazing, the plot was great. The series, as a whole, was spectacular.

I love The Fairytale Aspect :D

Wow, I hate everything about

Once Upon a Broken Heart. This is basically cringey romance for Disney adults.

Welp, this was a bummer.

I'm pretty reserved when it comes to purchasing new books. I usually prefer to read them through my library, then buy them if I like them enough to own. I made an exception here for two reasons: the intriguing synopsis and the gorgeous UK cover (let's be honest—the US cover is, er, less eye-catching, if we're being kind). I waited for ages for my copy to arrive from the UK and began reading with excitement! Perhaps I should've been a little less excited because this book was not as I expected.

I've only read one of Garber's books before; her most well-known, Caraval. I rated it rather averagely (3 stars), but there was enough promise in that book to make me confident I would enjoy this one. As evident by my rating of this one, I didn't. My rating is vastly different from the majority, which makes me think this book wasn't bad—I just wasn't the right reader for it.

I wasn't a fan of Evangeline. I would even go so far as to say that I disliked her. She struck me as foolish, and rash, and utterly ridiculous. That may be my cynicism (I'm not even cynical) speaking against her optimism but, I've read optimistic characters before that I loved and believed in—Evangeline was not near any of those. Her mind was a painful place to be. The rest of the characters weren't as infuriating, mainly because I didn't care about them at all. I've seen many people talk about Jacks, as well as his chemistry with Evangeline, but I must be blind as a bat because the only thing I saw between them was an unnatural and forced sense of "connection."

I felt that every aspect of this book went too far and not far enough (how is that even possible???). Example of too far: Evangeline bargains with an otherworldly creature to keep her cheating ex from getting married. Example of not far enough: We never see anything of Luc and Evangeline's relationship before that moment, so I really couldn't care at all whether he cheated, died, or turned into a monster—I would get the same emotional expression from Evangeline regardless (which is to say, none).

Now owning this book and not liking it, I'm not entirely sure what to do with it. If it had warranted even one star higher, I wouldn't mind keeping it for the beautiful cover alone. Maybe I need to look at my purchase through the lens of having bought some art, unattached to a story. Thinking like that, $20-odd dollars isn't so bad a price!

Fans of Heartless by Marrissa Meyer and The Cruel Prince by Holly Blackwell will love it!