Once Upon a Broken Heart

Fantasy

Print length: 432 pagesOrion Publishing Group, Limited, 2025

Description

Evangeline Fox has built her hopes around true love, so the news that her beloved will marry someone else sends her searching for a way to stop the wedding. She turns to the Prince of Hearts, a charismatic immortal known to be wicked, and accepts his price: three kisses, to be given whenever and wherever he chooses. What begins as a desperate attempt to repair her future soon places her inside a bargain whose terms are far less contained than they seemed. As the prince’s intentions deepen beyond their agreement, Evangeline must navigate dangerous magic, uncertain desire, and the consequences of trusting a being who treats human longing as an opportunity.

Reading profile

About this profile

Collected’s assessment, not reader ratings. Complexity runs from 1 (least demanding) to 5 (most demanding).

Writing: How much attention the sentences and language require.
Ideas: How much interpretation or abstract reasoning the book asks of you.
Structure: How much you need to keep track of speakers, timelines and connections.
Background knowledge: Prior knowledge needed to follow the book, beyond what it explains.
Emotional intensity: Emotional pressure, from gentle (1) to intense (5). Separate from difficulty.

Writing style

Atmospheric · Conversational · Descriptive

Pace

Brisk

Tone

Atmospheric · Playful · Romantic · Tense

Structure

Linear

Focus

Plot · Relationships · World

Emotional intensity

3 / 5

Reading complexity

1–5 · higher means more demanding

Writing: 2 / 5
Ideas: 2 / 5
Structure: 3 / 5
Background knowledge: 1 / 5

Themes

LoveMoralityObsessionTransformation

About Stephanie Garber

Stephanie Garber writes young adult fantasy romances built around seductive spectacles, binding bargains, and realities that refuse to stay fixed. Her plots move quickly through clues, curses, reversals, and concealed motives, while atmospheric, descriptive prose gives equal weight to magical settings and emotional stakes. Caraval establishes her characteristic method: a five-night, audience-participation game in which Scarlett must find her abducted sister, even though performance and magic make every perception suspect. The setup joins a puzzle-box structure to a story of sisterly protection and escape. In the interconnected Once Upon a Broken Heart trilogy, Garber shifts from staged competition to dangerous folklore. Evangeline Fox bargains with the immortal Prince of Hearts, and the precise price of three future kisses opens into a longer contest of trust, desire, and manipulation. The Ballad of Never After tightens that pattern through a murderous curse and a fragile alliance, keeping romance inseparable from mystery. Garber repeatedly turns wishes and promises into plot mechanisms, then tests her heroines through the terms they accepted.