Reading With Tyler

Name: The Ballad of Never After
Series: Once Upon a Broken Heart #2
Author: Stephanie Garber
Publisher: Macmillan Audio
Format: Audiobook
Genres: Young Adult, Fantasy, Romance
Noted Tropes: *After a discussion about whether or not tropes are spoilers, I’ve decided to remove this*
Spice Rating: Glimpses & Kisses🌶️

Rating:

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

Review:

The Ballad of Never After is the sequel to Once Upon a Broken Heart, and so there are likely spoilers below for book 1. There is also a chance for spoilers for the Caraval series. Any spoilers for The Ballad of Never After will be hidden as normal.

The Ballad of Never After was not a book I expected to be picking up. I didn’t love Once Upon a Broken Heart the way every one else seemed to. But rather, felt the story was unnecessarily complex and for as much as I liked Jacks, Eva wasn’t giving what I had hoped (in the way Dontella and Scarlet did in their books). But the ending of Once Upon a Broken Heart had me at least intrigued enough to continue – and my time off while I was playing Stardew Valley seemed like the perfect time to do it!

So we start off with Eva trying to find a way to rescue Apollo after a curse was revealed that put Apollo into a dead like state after kissing Eva at the end of OUaBH. And honestly, I thought that was a fun enough curse – but as the blurb suggests, nothing is that simple and further complications come to light. I actually really enjoyed the addition of these complications. At first I was like ‘oh of course’ and felt like it was one of those ‘oh and another…’ things from Stephanie Garber, but honestly I really liked it.

The relationship between Jacks and Eva starts off on very rocky grounds – as you can imagine – and I once again found myself questioning how it was at all possible that somehow these two were people’s favourite Garber couple when Tella and Legend are an item!! By the end of The Ballad of Never After, I was fully on board. I went on a journey throughout this book, one that really had my heart pulled in different directions, but I am so so grateful that I pushed through and got to experience.

If like me, you didn’t enjoy Once Upon a Broken Heart as much as you had hoped, please please push through and read The Ballad of Never After. It was so worth it.

I also listened to this as an audiobook – almost entirely while playing Stardew Valley, with only I think part 1 having been listened to before hand – and the narrator! Rebecca Soler was brilliant. I enjoyed listening to her voice – but once things really started happening in part 3, Rebecca’s performance was amazing. She had me reacting out loud constantly – much to the annoyance of my fiancé I’m sure. I’m thrilled that she finished out the trilogy recording book 3 as well – because she absolutely nailed it in book 2.

“Happy endings can be caught, but they are difficult to hold on to. They are dreams that want to escape the night. They are treasure with wings. They are wild, feral, reckless things that need to be constantly chased, or they will certainly run away.”