Title: The Ballad of Never After (Once Upon a Broken Heart #2)
Author: Stephanie Garber
Genre: Fantasy, fantasy romance, young adult
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Publication Date: 2022
Format: Audiobook
Length: 9 hours

Read if you like: Fairy tales, myths, murder mysteries, self-discovery, the pursuit of true love, magic setting

Rating: 

I’ve seen the Once Upon a Broken Heart series all over bookstagram, so not long ago I decided to give it a try. I enjoyed the first book but found that it felt very young adult-oriented (which it is, so this isn’t a criticism, just a fact). I wasn’t initially sure I was going to be completely sold on the series, but The Ballad of Never After changed that for me.

This book was packed with plot, detail, and character growth. There was so much going on that at times, I had to slow down the audiobook speed because I was worried I was going to miss something. While events in the first book felt sad, particularly around Evangeline, this book felt downright tragic. My heart was breaking for her and Jacks and I couldn’t stop listening as the action ramped up at the end. 

If you can get past the very dramatic reading that the narrator has for these audiobooks, they’re a super fun and entertaining ride. I’ve enjoyed following this story and I’m looking forward to finishing out the trilogy as soon as A Curse for True Love is released in October. 

Fair warning: as this is the second book in the series, there are spoilers below for the first book.

The Book: The Ballad of Never After by Stephanie Garber

When we left Evangeline Fox in Once Upon a Broken Heart, she’d just discovered that Jacks had betrayed her. She had also learned that she had the power to open Valerie Arches. Still stung from the betrayal, Evangeline vows to never trust Jacks again.

As she begins to pick up the pieces of her life, Evangeline quickly comes to learn that her murdered husband Apollo was not actually murdered, and instead is alive, but cursed. She makes it her new mission to return Apollo to his normal state, but as she’s working towards this goal, she learns the curse that Apollo is under is the curse of the Archer and the Fox. This curse forces Apollo to hunt Evangeline, and tragically, each time Apollo or Evangeline is hurt, the other experiences the same pain. This ties their fates together even further than they already have been. 

Evangeline escapes with Jacks to Chao’s estate, where she pours herself into trying to learn how to find the stones of the Valerie Arches, through which Jacks believes they may be able to find a cure for Apollo’s curse. As time goes on and Evangeline discovers the stones she needs to activate the arches, she also develops a deeper relationship with Jacks, and what she thought she knew becomes muddled. 

Before the story is through, they will both be faced with old friends, new foes, and all sorts of magic, and before they know it, everything that they’ve been working for will be called into question, and neither of them will ever be the same. 

The Review

There is so much that happens in this book, and so many interconnected pieces that all come together as the story unfolds that I found I needed to be paying close attention.

Plot-wise, this book was meaty, and I loved it. Garber goes far beyond the premise of the first book, where Evangeline is seeking true love at all costs, and complicates things with Evangeline through the magic that surrounds her and her relationship with Jacks. There were so many characters who all had independent motives that it brought together a whole host of different events and twists that had me wanting to keep listening as long as I could. 

In terms of characters, there was so much growth. Evangeline evolves beyond her fairy tale beliefs and past the actions she took in the previous novel to get her happy ending and becomes a much more nuanced heroine with complicated feelings and dimensions. I loved watching her grapple with the magic and relationships around her as she tried to determine both what was right and wrong, and how she felt about it. 

Jacks is also flushed out in so much more detail, which adds a lot of depth to his actions and helped me feel more invested in his outcomes and his relationship with Evangeline. I loved that as we move through the story, Jacks may evolve how he feels, but he stays relatively villainous. He has redeeming actions, but very seldom is he out for anyone other than himself. It makes the weight of his decisions in the end so much more significant. 

If I had to use one word to describe this book, it would be “entertaining”. There was a lot of plot, a lot of interconnected characters, and a lot of emotion, all served up in an action-packed, decently-paced package. Garber stuck true to the fairy tale-style premise in this book, but this one felt like it took on more depth and feeling than the first book did. And the end?! I loved how everything was kind of blown up in anticipation of the final book. I think there’s a lot of promise for the last installment. 

This has been a really fun series to work my way through, particularly on audio. It fits square in the young adult category, but if you’re looking for a fairytale-style fantasy with true love at the centre of everything, I think this series is certainly worth giving a go.