Once Upon A Broken Heart Trilogy by Stephanie Garber

Here is a summary with spoilers for the Once Upon A Broken Heart Trilogy by Stephanie Garber

ONCE UPON A BROKEN HEART

Evangeline Fox spends weeks searching for the missing door to the Prince of Hearts’ church, knowing its disappearance must be magical. When she finally finds it, she pricks her finger and enters the church, hoping to stop the wedding of her love, Luc Navarro, to her stepsister Marisol. Inside, she encounters the Prince of Hearts—Jacks—who offers to halt the wedding, but only if she agrees to kiss three people he chooses. Desperate, Evangeline accepts, and Jacks marks her with three tiny scars. She soon realizes that the wedding is stopped not through magic on Luc but because Jacks turns everyone to stone. When she drinks poison to break the curse, she too is petrified, but six weeks later, she is revived, having inadvertently inspired others to stop a Fate uprising, earning her recognition as a hero.

Once back, Evangeline discovers Luc never truly loved her, and her life has shifted dramatically. She begins rebuilding her life, taking charge of her father’s bookstore and deciding to move on from Luc. She is invited to the Magnificent North by the empress to attend Nocte Neverending, a magical ball meant to find a bride for Prince Apollo. Evangeline sees this as a potential new start, though she remains wary of Jacks, who seems bound to cross her path again. At the ball, Jacks forces her to kiss Prince Apollo as part of her deal, ensuring her compliance with his mysterious plans.

During the events in the North, Evangeline navigates intrigue, gossip, and magical manipulations. She discovers that Marisol used a love spell on Luc but had no involvement with Apollo’s death. Evangeline also realizes that Jacks has been manipulating her and others to achieve his goals, particularly regarding the mysterious Valory Arch. She works to uncover the truth behind Apollo’s death, the love spells, and the arch, learning to assert control over her own actions despite Jacks’s influence.

The climax unfolds when Evangeline brews a truth potion to expose Marisol’s interference and discovers that Tiberius, Apollo’s brother, is responsible for Apollo’s death. Meanwhile, Apollo is revealed to be in a suspended state, alive but incapacitated, and Evangeline resolves not to use him to open the Valory Arch, understanding Jacks’s schemes. By the end, Evangeline reclaims her position as a princess, protects Marisol, and prepares to confront the next challenge: opening a long-sealed door in the palace connected to the arch, setting up the next stage of her story.

Overall, the novel concludes with Evangeline aware of Jacks’s manipulations and her own agency, having survived magical curses, deception, and political intrigue, and poised to face the mysteries of the Valory Arch. Her personal growth is central—she moves beyond her initial obsession with Luc, navigates the complexities of magic and love, and gains the courage to make difficult choices for herself and others.

THE BALLAD OF NEVER AFTER

The chapter opens with Evangeline confronting Jacks in the palace library, blaming him for poisoning Apollo and the suffering she’s endured since he entered her life. Jacks counters that he’s helped elevate her from an orphan to a celebrated figure, though only for his own purposes. He offers to cure Apollo if she opens the Valory Arch, but Evangeline refuses. She attempts to open the Arch herself, using her blood on a wolf-headed door rumored to hold the Valor family’s secrets, only to find it locked. A ghostly librarian explains that the Arch requires four stones—luck, truth, mirth, and youth—but vanishes before giving more guidance, leaving Evangeline wary of supernatural dangers beyond Jacks.

Evangeline struggles to find a cure for Apollo while navigating palace life, visits LaLa, the Unwed Bride Fate, and confronts both Apollo and Luc, a newly turned vampire claiming to be Apollo’s cousin. Jacks warns her that a mirror curse links her and Apollo: any harm to one will affect the other, including death. Evangeline experiences escalating danger, including poisoned arrows, and is taken to Chaos, the vampire lord, whose venom heals her. During this time, she begins to grapple with her complicated feelings toward Jacks, torn between anger, desire, and mistrust, while also searching for the stones needed to open the Valory Arch.

Through a series of investigations, Evangeline discovers clues about the stones and the Valory Arch’s history, including the tragic fate of the Merrywood family and the origins of the arch as a prison for magical abominations. At LaLa’s engagement party, she retrieves the truth and mirth stones, but the mirth stone’s magic manipulates her emotions, forcing her to confront the dangerous allure of Jacks’s presence. She kills Petra, a rival key holding the youth stone, realizing the stakes of her mission and the lengths others will go to claim the stones. Jacks helps protect her while revealing the immense powers and dangers of the arch stones.

The narrative escalates as Evangeline uncovers that the four stones, once united, can allow time travel. Jacks’s motivation becomes clear: he wants to use the stones to alter his past and reclaim a lost love, Donatella, because he previously killed his first true love, the original “fox” from the ballad. Evangeline understands that helping him could erase their shared experiences, yet she is drawn into the arch’s mysteries. Chaos uses Evangeline to open the Arch, revealing the Valor family’s long-lost members, while she witnesses the deadly consequences of the arch’s power and Jacks’s desperate quest.

In the conclusion, Evangeline faces heartbreak as she must choose between love, duty, and survival. While the arch is opened, Chaos is freed and a violent confrontation ensues. Ultimately, Evangeline declares her love for Jacks, but before any resolution, Apollo uses magic to erase her memories of both men, leaving her disoriented, alone, and unable to distinguish friend from foe. The story ends with Evangeline trapped in a precarious situation, her memory wiped, as Apollo claims to be her husband, setting up a tense and uncertain future.

A CURSE FOR TRUE LOVE

Evangeline wakes up with no memory of the past year, only a sense that she must tell someone something important. Apollo, claiming to be her husband, reassures her she is safe and explains that Lord Jacks, Prince of Hearts, stole her memories and poisoned him, though Apollo is now back from the dead. He shows her a tattoo with her name over his heart and promises to protect her. While Apollo pursues Jacks and manages political affairs, Evangeline remains in the castle, noticing both the beauty and familiarity of her surroundings, but begins to sense that everything is not as perfect as it seems. A mysterious man visits her secretly, hinting that he can help her regain her memories, which sets Evangeline on a path to question Apollo’s version of events.

As she learns more about her history, Evangeline starts to realize the truth about her past with Jacks. She begins to recover fragments of memory when she interacts with him, though she does not yet know his true identity as the Archer. Apollo manipulates her environment, including engineering an accident at the wishing well to make her feel endangered and more dependent on him. Evangeline grows increasingly uneasy with Apollo’s control and the secrecy surrounding her memories, even as she remains married to him. Encounters with Jacks, including training and brief confrontations, trigger her recollections and stir conflicting feelings, though she struggles to reconcile them with her loyalty to Apollo.

Evangeline gradually uncovers that Apollo never died and manipulated her memories to erase her love for Jacks, hoping to keep her with him. She realizes that Jacks is responsible for past events that involved danger and loss but also that he is her true love. Political tension escalates with threats from the great houses, murders blamed on Jacks, and the pursuit of the Tree of Souls, which Apollo wants for immortality. Evangeline navigates the Cursed Forest, survives attacks, and begins actively seeking Jacks, aided by her friend LaLa, while learning about curses and dangerous magical artifacts that link them to both Apollo and Aurora, a key antagonist manipulating events to control Jacks.

The story culminates when Evangeline and Jacks confront the threats surrounding them. Jacks reveals his heart has been removed and hidden to prevent harm, but Evangeline refuses to abandon him. She finds him at the Phoenix Tree, where he is holding his heart, and she kisses him to restore it. The kiss revives their connection and restores Jacks fully, confirming their mutual love and breaking the manipulations that kept them apart. Evangeline finally regains her memories completely and understands Apollo’s role in erasing them, though she is determined to remain with Jacks despite the danger.

The ending is intense and unresolved regarding Apollo. After Evangeline and Jacks reconnect and share their true love, Apollo arrives at the Phoenix Tree, plucks a leaf that bursts into flames, and forces Evangeline away, leaving the final confrontation between her, Jacks, and Apollo uncertain. This sets up a precarious future where Evangeline must navigate her love for Jacks, the dangers posed by Apollo, and the larger magical conflicts of the kingdom.