Once Upon a Broken Heart Book Review: Where the Jacks Obsession Begins

Rating: ★★★★★

"Once Upon a Broken Heart" Book Review:

If you've seen anyone screaming about Jacks the Prince of Hearts on BookTok or bookish Twitter, this is where the damage starts. Once Upon a Broken Heart is the first book in Stephanie Garber's series that leads to The Ballad of Never After and A Curse for True Love, and it's the doorway into one of the most addictive romantasy ships in recent memory.

Evangeline Fox is desperate. The love of her life is about to marry someone else, and in her desperation she does the one thing every fairy tale warns you not to do: she makes a deal with a Fate. Specifically, she makes a deal with Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, a Fate cursed to kill anyone he kisses. He'll stop the wedding in exchange for three kisses — to be called in at his discretion, at a time of his choosing. And of course, deals with Fates always come with consequences that make the original problem look quaint.

Garber's Caraval series was already lush, romantic, and drenched in atmosphere, but this series leans even harder into the fairy-tale romance elements. The worldbuilding feels like stepping inside an illuminated manuscript — everything gilded and gorgeous and slightly dangerous, like candy that might be poisoned. Garber doesn't build worlds with maps and political systems. She builds them with sensations — the smell of sugar and something burning, the sound of a clock that counts down to something terrible, the color of a sky that's wrong in a way you can't quite name.

And then there's Jacks. The morally gray love interest that romantasy readers live for. He's dangerous — genuinely, people-die dangerous. He's cruel, calculating, and centuries old. But Garber gives him just enough vulnerability, just enough cracks in the facade, to make you hope. To make you think maybe, maybe, this time the monster gets to be gentle. It's masterfully done, and it's why an entire corner of the internet has lost its collective mind over this character.

Four stars. If you're looking to start this series, this is where you begin. And when you finish and immediately need to talk about it with someone — because you will — you'll understand why this series has the following it does.

If You Liked Once Upon a Broken Heart, Try:

• The Cruel Prince by Holly Black — Fae romance with a similarly dangerous love interest and a heroine who refuses to be a victim, with the same "I know he's terrible but I can't look away" energy.

• Caraval by Stephanie Garber — If you haven't read Garber's first series, it's set in the same universe with the same atmospheric, dreamy quality and will scratch the same itch.

• House of Salt and Sorrows by Erin A. Craig — Dark fairy-tale retelling with lush gothic atmosphere and a romance that blooms inside a mystery.

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