A Curse for True Love - Review

A Curse for True Love (Once Upon a Broken Heart, # 3)

By: Stephanie Garber

Publication: October 24, 2023 by Flatiron

386 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Magic

Source: Personal Kindle Library

( Goodreads | Amazon )

*Note: The above link to Amazon is an affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--Two villains, one girl, and a deadly battle for happily ever after.

Evangeline Fox ventured to the Magnificent North in search of her happy ending, and it seems as if she has it. She’s married to a handsome prince and lives in a legendary castle. But Evangeline has no idea of the devastating price she’s paid for this fairytale. She doesn’t know what she has lost, and her husband is determined to make sure she never finds out . . . but first he must kill Jacks, the Prince of Hearts.

Blood will be shed, hearts will be stolen, and true love will be put to the test in A Curse for True Love, the breathlessly anticipated conclusion to the Once Upon A Broken Heart trilogy.

Oh my heart. After the cliffhanger ending of The Ballad of Never After I jumped into A Curse for True Love immediately. Like, I finished and almost simply flipped the next page found book 3 on my Kindle, and just kept reading. I highly recommend having A Curse for True Love to read lined up if you plan to read The Ballad of Never After. 

So we start with Evangeline having just lost her memory of the last year. She doesn't remember anyone she's met in the Magnificent North. She wakes up to Apollo telling her that he's her husband (true), and then he proceeds to fill in minimal gaps with a few historical rewrites. Evangeline doesn't know the difference. She does have some instinctual, residual feelings. I think this is actually a scientifically proven thing in some ways. Our brains can remember when we've left a task incomplete even if we can't always remember what that task was., Evangeline feels an urgent sense that she needed to tell someone something very important. But she can't remember who and she can't remember what. She has some instinctual feelings about Apollo. She has some instinctual feelings about other characters as well--some she's met before and some she hasn't. I was annoyed that she didn't trust her instincts as much as I wanted her to, yet I could see why she wouldn't. 

Jacks is heartbroken. He knew Time would take something from him, but he didn't think that something would be taken from Evangeline instead. He blames himself. Yet he's just so relieved that she's still alive--considering he witnessed Chaos murder her out of bloodthirst. He wants so badly for her to remember him and her feelings for him. Yet he also knows that her forgetting is actually less painful for her. But not less painful for him. At the same time, he can't have gone through all of that just for someone else to kill her. And yet it seems she's still being sought after by multiple people trying to harm her. Jacks has a fulltime job trying to keep her alive. And thus they keep getting thrown together. 

Evangeline has the smallest sparks of remembering when she's near Jacks, and that makes her want to be near him more. I wondered how long the memory loss would drag on. And thankfully, they all came back in one whoosh eventually rather than trickling out over the course of the entire book. But that's all I'll say about that before we spoil too much.

Favorite quotes:

-Her heart still hurt, as if it had been broken and only jagged bits remained. She put a hand on it, as if to keep more pieces from breaking off. And once again, she was struck with the inescapable feeling that among everything she'd forgotten was one thing more important than all the rest, more important than anything.

-...but some things were worth hurting for...

-"I do understand, and I hope you understand that as long as you treat me like an untrustworthy captive, I will act like one instead of like your wife."

-Instead she was exhilarated. It felt as if she'd found a bit of her old self. And it was one of her favorite pieces. It was the part of herself that loved to hope.

-But she wasn't supposed to want to kiss him. It wasn't fair of [...] to hate her a little for it. But feeling hateful was the only thing that made it possible for him to leave. And he really needed to leave.

-...the curse had been cast out of terror, and curses that come from a place of fear always turn out a little twisted or become far more terrible than intended.

-"I've seen you try before. I've seen you want something more than anything else in the entire world. I've seen what you're willing to do. How far you were willing to go. You haven't even come close to that now."

-"There is never necessary evil, just poor choices, and I fear you're about to make one, boy."

-"Being yours does not make you mine."

-"I don't believe you, [...]. I might not remember everything about you. But I know you. I know that I know you, and I don't believe there is anything you can't do."

-"I know I seem naive," Evangeline pressed on. "I know my faith in love might appear foolish. I also know it might not be enough. But I'm not doing this because I believe I'll win. I'm actually a little afraid I'm going to lose. I no longer think love is a guarantee of victory or of happily ever after. But I think it's a reason to fight for those things. I know my attempt to save [...] could end in a firey explosion, but I'd rather go up in flames with him than watch while he burns."

-"I'm not going to hurt you." "I feel as if that's what people always say just before they hurt you."

The rest of my favorite quotes spoil too much so I won't include them. 

A Curse for True Love is a good ending to a fun trilogy. I enjoyed all of the fairytale vibes. I liked the story curse, which was still present and working through this story. I loved Evangeline and Jacks and Lala. And I was happy with how everything ended. My only wish is that we had a little more time where the characters were happy together before it was over. Of course, the ending was left open for other stories in this world, and I'm 100% here for them. A Curse for True Love gets 4 Stars. Have you read A Curse for True Love? What did you think? Let me know!

Top Ten Fairy Tale Retellings

Top 10 Tuesday is a post hosted by The Broke and the Bookish and this week's topic is Top Ten Fairy Tale Retellings.

I’m not even sure I’ve read 10 retellings—much less specifically fairytale retellings. But these are my favorite retellings the only retellings I’ve read period.

1. The Lunar Chronicles by Marissa Meyer – Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Rapunzel, and Snow White
2. Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge – Beauty and the Beast
3. Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers – Hosea
4. Darcy’s Story by Janet Aylmer – Retelling of Pride and Prejudice but from Mr. Darcy’s POV
6. The Fall by Bethany Griffin – The Fall of the House of Usher
7. Crimson Bound by Rosamund Hodge – Little Red Riding Hood & The Girl with No Hands

What are your favorite retellings? Let me know!

Crimson Bound - Review

Crimson Bound

By: Rosamund Hodge

Published: May 5th 2015 by Balzer & Bray/Harperteen

448 pages

Genre: Young Adult, Fantasy, Retelling

Source: Publisher via Edelweiss (Thank you!!)

( Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository )

*Note: The above links to Amazon and Book Depository are affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--When Rachelle was fifteen she was good—apprenticed to her aunt and in training to protect her village from dark magic. But she was also reckless— straying from the forest path in search of a way to free her world from the threat of eternal darkness. After an illicit meeting goes dreadfully wrong, Rachelle is forced to make a terrible choice that binds her to the very evil she had hoped to defeat.

Three years later, Rachelle has given her life to serving the realm, fighting deadly creatures in an effort to atone. When the king orders her to guard his son Armand—the man she hates most—Rachelle forces Armand to help her find the legendary sword that might save their world. As the two become unexpected allies, they uncover far-reaching conspiracies, hidden magic, and a love that may be their undoing. In a palace built on unbelievable wealth and dangerous secrets, can Rachelle discover the truth and stop the fall of endless night?

Inspired by the classic fairy tale Little Red Riding Hood, Crimson Bound is an exhilarating tale of darkness, love, and redemption.

I listened to Cruel Beauty on audio a while back, and I enjoyed it. But I also think I enjoyed it as much as I did because it was on audio. It had more of a slow progression than I typically enjoy, so I was a little concerned about reading Crimson Bound over listening to the audio version. But sometimes you don’t really get much choice in the format, so I was just happy to have the opportunity to read and review Crimson Bound. And well, Crimson Bound was a little slow. And truthfully, I might have liked it better had I been listening to the audiobook versus reading it. But I did enjoy it.

Crimson Bound is kind of a combination of two fairytales: Little Red Riding Hood and The Girl With No Hands. Personally, I know nothing about The Girl With No Hands, and so I wasn’t able to really look for how all the pieces of that fairytale fit into Crimson Bound. The ins and outs of the world Rosamund Hodge created in Crimson Bound are fairly complicated to describe. It was easy to understand while reading, but to break things down for you here would be a bit much.

As the description says, Rachelle makes a bad decision that ends up with her being bound to the evil she was trying to figure out how to defeat. Even as a young girl, Rachelle never wanted to sit idly by as the world around her suffers. Now she’s faced with carrying the guilt of her decisions with her or die trying to redeem herself and save those who she was seeking to save from the beginning.

The description isn’t quite accurate when it says that Armand—who Rachelle is charged with guarding—is the man she hates most. She hates the Devourer. She hates the forestborn who turned her bloodbound, and she hates the bishop. Armand…well he falls in line definitely after these three. Armand survived what Rachelle could not. When a forestborn approached him to turn him bloodbound, Armand was able to resist completeing the process and Rachelle hates what that means. It means that she might have been able to resist too. And that’s what Rachelle hates. Herself.

Like Rachelle, I wasn’t fully sure who to trust or who to root for in the beginning. And even when the emotional connection began to develop with Rachelle, I had a hard time connecting to her choice fully. I didn’t really have all of the twists figured out beforehand, but I also didn’t feel the need to try. The ending felt a little clean for me. But this is based off a fairytale afterall.

Favorite quotes:

-“I grow impatient, little girl.” “Then learn to wait,” she bit out..

-“Do you think that doing the right thing will always be pretty?”

-“I think sometimes there is no right thing.”

-…”my mother used to say that if we all got what we deserved, we’d all be dead. And yet somehow God refrains from smiting us.”

-She was bloodbound, after all, and being bloodbound meant knowing how easily I could never turned into Yes, I will.

In the end, I enjoyed Crimson Bound. I wanted to keep reading and was more invested than I thought I would be. Yet at the same time, Crimson Bound was also easy to put down when I needed to. When I finished Crimson Bound I realized that it was a good book, but not exceptional. There wasn’t much for me to complain about, but I wasn’t blown away either. Crimson Bound gets 3 Stars. Have you read Crimson Bound? What did you think? Let me know!

Cruel Beauty - Review

Cruel Beauty

By: Rosamund Hodge

Published: January 28th 2014 by Balzer + Bray

342 pages

Genre: YA, Fantasy, Retellings, Mythology, Fairy Tales

Source: Free Audiobook Sync Download

( Goodreads | Amazon | Book Depository )

*Note: The above links to Amazon and Book Depository are affiliate links. Affiliate links support giveaways for Somewhere Only We Know readers.

Goodreads description--Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast in this sweeping fantasy about one girl's journey to fulfill her destiny and the monster who gets in her way-by stealing her heart.

Based on the classic fairy tale Beauty and the Beast, Cruel Beauty is a dazzling love story about our deepest desires and their power to change our destiny.

Since birth, Nyx has been betrothed to the evil ruler of her kingdom-all because of a foolish bargain struck by her father. And since birth, she has been in training to kill him.

With no choice but to fulfill her duty, Nyx resents her family for never trying to save her and hates herself for wanting to escape her fate. Still, on her seventeenth birthday, Nyx abandons everything she's ever known to marry the all-powerful, immortal Ignifex. Her plan? Seduce him, destroy his enchanted castle, and break the nine-hundred-year-old curse he put on her people.

But Ignifex is not at all what Nyx expected. The strangely charming lord beguiles her, and his castle-a shifting maze of magical rooms-enthralls her.

As Nyx searches for a way to free her homeland by uncovering Ignifex's secrets, she finds herself unwillingly drawn to him. Even if she could bring herself to love her sworn enemy, how can she refuse her duty to kill him? With time running out, Nyx must decide what is more important: the future of her kingdom, or the man she was never supposed to love.

I’m not sure how much I’m going to have to say about Cruel Beauty. I got this as a free audio download this past summer from Sync. Can’t beat free, right? And I don’t know that I would have ever gotten around to this one had I not had it on audio. Anyway, so I was excited about it because it’s dubbed as a Beauty and the Beast retelling right? I can kind of see that. However, the description actually puts it as “Graceling meets Beauty and the Beast” and to that I have to say “WHERE? Did I read a different book?” Because there is nothing even remotely similar to Graceling about this book. (At least not Graceling by Kristin Cashore. Maybe they meant the other Graceling book that I haven't read.)

Because of the comparison to Beauty and the Beast, I was looking for different aspects of that story to come in to Cruel Beauty and so I was initially annoyed when we started heading down the path with Shade. That just didn’t seem to be in line with the events of what happens in Beauty and the Beast. However, eventually, that played itself out in a way that I was okay with.

Overall, I kind of feel like I don’t have much to add. Nyx goes through a period of time toward the end of the book where she’s forgotten most of what she experienced through the majority of the book. That section was slightly annoying. It seemed like an easy conflict choice, and one that was easily resolved as well. I wasn’t sure that there would be an ending that I would be okay with, but ultimately I was content with how everything went. I think it’s possible that I would have liked this one more or possibly less had I not been listening to the audio version. There was nothing wrong with the narrator, but I can see where in some places I would have burrowed deeper had I been reading instead of listening, yet in other places I can see that I might have gotten bogged down as well.

It was a pleasant story to experience, but I wasn’t blown away and I wasn’t frustrated too much. So all in all, I’m thinking a pretty average rating. Cruel Beauty gets 3.5 Stars for me. Have you read Cruel Beauty? What did you think? Let me know!