Once Upon A Broken Heart

Once Upon A Broken Heart Book Review by Stephanie Garber 

Fairy Tales, weddings, princesses, curses, poison, Fates, step-sisters, prophecies—this book has it all. 

Unfortunately, it doesn’t do any of it very well. 

Stephanie Garber is one of those authors that has always been sitting in the back-burner of my mind, but one that I never got around to. Her Carvale series is particularly renowned and while I didn’t have a specific reason for not reading them, it was more of a gut feeling. 

If the Caravale series is anything like Once Upon A Broken Heart, my gut feeling was absolutely correct. 

Once Upon A Broken Heart is a meta fairytale about a rose gold girl named Evangeline who goes from pauper to princess to fugitive to prophetic savior. 

The plot is a nonsensical mess of weaving plot lines in which the only consistency is the repetitive writing, Jacks the Prince of Hearts, and Evangeline hoping for love. 

There’s also a wedding, travel, step-sisters, Fates, kingdoms, murder, and of course, vampires. I would explain the plot more, but honestly, it’s such a mess and it really doesn’t matter at the end. 

All you need to know is that it parallels a plethora of well-known fairy tales in the hopes of achieving the same magic, romance, and spell-binding creativity and mostly fails. 

Evangeline as a main character is…dumber than a box of rocks. Garber tries really hard to show how sweet Evangeline is, how hopeful and charming and kind, but in actuality, Evangeline makes several dumb decisions over and over and over agian all in the name of love. 

I get what Garber is going for. 

I don’t hate Evangeline, but I didn’t find her particularly compelling. She’s very reminiscent of a typical YA female protagonist: brave, kind, good, etc. Her blind optimism is annoying, as is the fact that she cares deeply for people she barely knows. 

The other main character, Jacks, is more interesting, slightly, and only because he’s got some attitude and backbone. He’s often reticent, barbed, and is described as having dark blue hair which I admit sounds pretty cool. 

His major downfall is calling Evangeline Little Fox every two goddamn seconds and making me want to rip my hair out. 

Otherwise, he’s your very typical YA male love interest: broody, handsome, and untouchable. 

All the other characters don’t matter. 

Garber goes through plot lines and characters like I go through a Cheetos bag: quickly. 

My overall biggest complaint with this book is its pacing. It’s a flaw that bleeds into everything else—plot, characters, writing, setting. 

The book is way, way too fast. We never have time to truly adjust to anything before Garber is onto the next asinine development. 

We barely have time to meet Evangeline, her family, and the setting of the South before Evangeline makes an ill-advised deal with Jacks, stops a wedding, turns to stone, awakens, meets with the Queen, and is shipped off to the North to partake in some vaguely described festival called Noctre Neverending. 

This happens maybe in the span of 20 or 30 pages. Which is ludicrous. 

Because of the speedy pacing, Garber also feels the need to repeat herself five thousand times throughout the duration of the book which got very old very fast. 

In almost every chapter, we’d get a run down of what had happened, a reminder that Evangeline was turned to Stone once, a reminder that Jacks is a bad boy, and a reminder that Evangeline ruined Marisol’s life and feels guilty.

Maddening. 

It also makes the book a very juvenile experience as every single thing is pointed out and explained to you as a reader. I don’t know who they were marketing this book to, but I’d wager a guess and say thirteen-year olds. Anyone older would probably find this book immature like I did. 

That being said, Garber’s ideas are good and creative, but she fails to expand or take the time to really go in depth for any of them. 

The setting, the world, the characters, the plot—they’re all shafted with this really quick, breakneck pace that ruins everything. 

I genuinely believe that if Garber took the time to expand each chapter, delve into each emotion, and really explore the world, the book would be twice as big and innumerably better. 

I liked the idea of this novel a lot. The idea of the different Fates from Tarot cards being god-like people, the North and South, all the magic, and the creativity was super alluring.  

It gives me Shrek vibes in that it’s trying to turn fairy tale stereotypes on its head while being a fairy tale itself. 

However, Shrek is a masterpiece and this book is…not. 

Recommendation: Watch Shrek and call it a day. 

Score: 4/10