Once Upon a Broken Heart

About the Once Upon a Broken Heart series

Evangeline Fox has always believed in happy endings — until the boy she loves marries her stepsister. Heartbroken, she strikes a bargain with Jacks, the charming, dangerous Prince of Hearts, who promises to make her forget her pain in exchange for three future favors. What follows is a fairy-tale-flavored fantasy built on trickery and fine print: every wish Evangeline makes gets twisted, every bargain hides a trap, and the closer she gets to Jacks the less certain she is whether he's saving her or steering her exactly where he wants her. The series folds in curses, immortal Fate-touched villains, and a slow-burn romance that keeps recontextualizing itself as Evangeline learns how much of her own story has been rigged from the start.

Set in the same richly theatrical universe as Stephanie Garber's Caraval trilogy — sharing its love of riddles, unreliable narration, and morally grey magic-users called Fates — Once Upon a Broken Heart follows a new heroine and cast, with its own self-contained arc that doesn't require having read Caraval first. Garber leans further into dark fairy-tale romance here, with Jacks in particular becoming one of her most fan-favorite, hard-to-read love interests.

How to read this series

Read the books in publication order: Once Upon a Broken Heart, The Ballad of Never After, A Curse for True Love, and the newer fourth entry, The Mirror of Infinite Endings. Evangeline and Jacks's bargain runs continuously across the books, so they need to be read in sequence.

You do not need to have read the Caraval trilogy first — the two series share a universe and some mythology (the Fates) but follow entirely different protagonists and can be started with either one.