Once Upon a Broken Heart

Once Upon a Broken Heart is the first novel of Stephanie Garber's second series, published in 2021 by Flatiron Books and Hodder & Stoughton, among others. It is set in the Magnificent North, a region of her earlier Caraval world, and it treats the fairy-tale expectation of a happy ending as something that can be bargained for.

Evangeline Fox's faith in true love and happy endings lasted for as long as she can remember, until the man she loves announces that he is marrying someone else. To stop the wedding she strikes a bargain with the Prince of Hearts, an immortal with a reputation for cruelty and a smile that does most of the work. The price he names is three kisses, to be given when and where he chooses, which is a term Evangeline accepts because she is not in a position to negotiate.

After the first of them, Evangeline understands that she has badly miscalculated. The Prince of Hearts intends to take more from her than the agreement she thought she was making, and the story becomes a question of what she is willing to hand over in order to keep the outcome she wanted. Garber writes it in Evangeline's voice, so the reader learns the rules of the north at the same time she does: everything there is beautiful, nothing is free, and the people who offer help all want something in return.

The book is the first of a trilogy, and it ends in a way that the second volume has to answer for. The three novels follow Evangeline and the Prince of Hearts through a set of bargains that get more expensive each time, and the series shares the same universe as Caraval, though it can be read without it.