A Curse for True Love by Stephanie Garber Book Summary
Check out my full book summary of A Curse for True Love by Stephanie Garber, the final book in the Broken Heart trilogy. This summary is to help you remember the main points in this book before reading my book review. If you haven’t finished reading this one or any in the Broken Heart series, I highly recommend them.
This book picks up right after the previous book, The Ballad of Never After, left off. I have a full review and summary of that book as well. I also have have a summary and review of the first book, Once Upon a Broken Heart.
Part 4
Chapters 1-3
When she’s in the arms of a mysterious man, Apollo tells Evangeline Fox that he’s her husband, and she doesn’t remember him because a villain who’s trying to tear them apart took all her memories. Leaving the Valory arch and going back into the castle, servant, all seem shocked, and Evangeline finds out he’s the prince. She doesn’t feel any spark of recollection for him at all, and all she can remember is that she had something vital to tell someone else.
Apollo tells every in the castle that he came back from the dead to save Evangeline, but she still doesn’t feel like a princess even around the handsome prince. While doctors come in and out of her room to check on her, a man named Kristof Knightlinger sneaks in and gives Evangeline his card to come visit for help filling in her missing memories.
Chapters 4-5
Apollo meets with his council of Great Houses which has just added Lord Vale, who’s actually Wolfric Valor, the first king of the North. At the meeting, Apollo makes House Vale (now composed of the Valor family) an official Great House for helping him, and the council insists he has an heir with Evangeline soon. Apollo truly believes that he’s helping Evangeline by keeping her from Lord Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, and letting her believe he took her memories.
To keep her thinking of the memories, Apollo keeps Evangeline busy all day, but she still feels like something is wrong. While getting fitted for clothes, Evangeline notices a broken heart scar on her wrist and feels like it’s important. That night, Apollo takes Evangeline on a walk, and they kiss.
Chapters 6-7
The next day, Madame Voss, her royal tutor, comes in to tell her about the story of her and Apollo along with pictures. Nothing is familiar except when there’s mention of the fairy tale The Archer and the Fox which makes Evangeline feel sorrowful. Evangeline wants to go out to meet Mr. Knightlinger about her lost memories, but when the guards say she can’t leave the palace grounds, she demands to see Apollo.
When she finds him, he introduces her to Garrick of the Greenwood, the leader of the Guild of Heroes, a mercenary group that popped up when Apollo ‘died’. Garrick asks for her blood because it’s connected to Jacks through the scar on her wrist, but before she says yes, his pet bird claws her shoulder. Garrick leaves after wiping some blood from her shoulder, and Evangeline is furious Apollo let him do that.
Chapters 8-10
Then, Evangeline hears Apollo has a meeting with Lord Slaughterwood about Jacks, but Apollo won’t let her come. Instead she receives a note from her tutor to meet her at the garden wishing well, but someone pushes Evangeline into the well when she’s looking in to make a wish. Just when she thinks she’ll drowned, the bucket comes down, and a man pulls her out.
The man is so beautiful that Evangeline thinks he’s an angel. He assures her that he’s not as he holds her tightly, but sets her down in the garden right before a pair of guards walk up.
Chapters 11-12
In the middle of the night, Jacks dressed as a guard wakes up Evangeline to practice self-defense, and he tells her that his name is Archer. Evangeline suddenly has a flash of a memory of another bedroom (Jacks’) but she still doesn’t remember anything else. She follows him outside to the garden when he grabs her from behind in order for her to practice fighting him off.
As he’s teaching her, Evangeline can tell that Archer isn’t a good idea to trust, but she can’t help but notice that she likes it when he touches her. He gives her a knife that causes another spark of memory of Jacks’s dagger but Archer disappears before she can ask.
Chapters 13-15
Apollo thinks that he’s needs to do more for his legacy because he was so quickly replaced and forgotten when he died. He also has the guards who lost Evangeline in the fog executed even though he’s the one who sent the note and had her pushed in order for her to feel more in danger. Apollo believes he’s doing what’s best for Evangeline to keep her safe from Jacks but still does feel guilty.
Evangeline arrives at the ball that night looking for Archer, but Apollo intends to keep her close by all night. Then, Lord Belleflower, who’s on the council but doesn’t get along with Apollo, lets slip to Evangeline that her guards were killed for the well incident. She’s visibly upset, but Apollo says it’s just a rumor.
Chapters 16-18
At the ball, Aurora Valor introduces herself to Evangeline along with her parents Lord and Lady Vale (actually Wolfric and Honora Valor) who say they’re restoring the ruined Merrywood Manor. Evangeline thinks she recognizes the name as Aurora Vale tells the story of Vengeance Slaughterwood destroying it. Apollo looks upset, but he’s suddenly called away by a guard.
Evangeline decides to leave the ball early, but when she’s back in her bed, almost asleep an assassin comes and tries to stab her. Suddenly, Archer is there, pulling the man off and killing him. Feeling drawn to him, Evangeline touches Archer’s hand, and she has a memory of Archer carrying her out of the ocean.
Chapters 19
Apollo is at the home of the Fortuna family, one of the Great Houses, to find that all the family except one has been massacred. When they’re alone, the surviving teenage boy tells Apollo it was a man that couldn’t have been human he moved so fast, but Apollo stabs the boy and makes it look self-inflicted. Then, Apollo tells everyone else that the boy said Jacks did this.
When Jacks tries to leave her room, Evangeline races after him, and when they’re finally close Evangeline thinks that Jacks is going to kiss her. But he still won’t say who he really is or how he knows her. She feels like she wants to stay with him, but knows it’s a bad idea because she’s married.
Back in her room later, Apollo returns later, and when he kisses Evangeline, she has a memory of Apollo kissing her, but Jacks pulling her away. Obviously startled, Evangeline blurts out she saw a memory of Apollo proposing to her, but he only seems angry.
Chapters 21-22
Leaving the palace, Jacks hears whispers of what happened to the Fortuna family. Jacks travels to Merrywood and warns Castor Valor that people are on to him. Back at the palace, Evangeline sees the morning newspaper story about the family killed by Jacks, and recognizes the photo below as Archer.
She decides to tell Apollo about Archer, but finds out he’s already left for The Hunt which she asks her guards to take her to. They tell her annual The Hunt is based on a tradition of trying to find a unicorn in the Cursed Forest, but now someone dresses as a unicorn that they try to find. The finder, or the unicorn if they’re not found after three days, gets a bunch of prizes.
Chapters 23-24
When Evangeline makes it to the large camp of people waiting to shortly start The Hunt, she follows Lord Belleflower who says he’s bringing her to Apollo. Lord Belleflower kills her guard and then tries to kill her because of Petra he says. Evangeline uses Jacks’ knife to cut off his hand and get away.
On the other side of camp, someone says they saw Evangeline run into the Cursed Forest after Lord Belleflower attacked her.
Chapters 25-26
In the forest, Evangeline arrives at the street in Valenda where her father’s shop was, and she realizes it looks like the day of her twelfth birthday one of her favorite days ever. She goes inside the shop searching for her parents, and she can hear them talking but never find them. Suddenly, a handsome stranger appears telling her it’s the forest’s way of trapping her.
Then, Jacks appears and stabs the stranger telling him to stay away from Evangeline. Jacks tells her that he’s not dead, is actually a monster, and they need to get out of here. When Evangeline calls him a monster, Jacks says he’s her monster.
Chapter 27-28
Suddenly, Jacks ties their hands together to get her to leave, and it now looks like they’re at a cozy inn that Jacks calls the Hollow. Confirming this was the place of his best day, Jacks calls her Little Fox which makes Evangeline sure her heart and her body want to be with Jacks, but she still can’t remember anything. Jacks looks hurt, but says he’s had to get her out of the forest.
Back at his camp, Apollo has summoned Wolfric and Honora Vale to ask about the Tree of Souls. Wolfric confirms that he’s grown the tree that supposedly gives immortality, but he says it’s evil.
Chapters 29-30
When they get out of the forest that night, they go into an inn for a room, and Jacks tries to pour gold dust on Evangeline that’s some kind of sleeping powder as he says goodbye. Evangeline knocks it from his hands so that it gets on both of them, and pulls Jacks into bed with her. As she’s trying to take off his shirt, he starts falling asleep, and Evangeline finds a letter in her pocket that she wrote herself telling herself never to trust Jacks again.
Reading the letter causes all her memories to return, and sends her into a dream like trance where she watches all these memories knowing for sure she’s in love with Jacks. When she wakes from the dream, Jacks is gone, but she finds blood in her room along with three bodies downstairs. Suddenly, Apollo is there, but Evangeline keeps it a secret that her memories are back when she’s telling him it was the work of a vampire.
Chapters 31-32
On the carriage ride, Evangeline studies the glass cuff that appeared on her arm when she woke up that Jacks must have put on. Then, she notices they’re not going back to the palace, and Apollo says they’re going to Merrywood village to help the Vales rebuild. He also notices the protection cuff as Vengeance Slaughterwood’s famed cuff that will hurt anyone trying to hurt you, but he doesn’t tell Evangeline what it is.
When they arrive at the royal camp outside Merrywood, Aurora Vale comes to meet them, and Apollo remembers how Aurora is the one who gave him the elixir to take Evangeline’s memories right after he woke up. Aurora has been holding it over him asking for favors, and she slips him a note to meet her in the forest later. In the tent, Apollo tries to pull Evangeline closer to him, but because she doesn’t want to, the magic cuff hurts Apollo.
Chapters 33-34
As Evangeline tries to think of a way to get out of Apollo’s tent and camp, LaLa shows up in her tent dressed as a guard. Evangeline is so happy to see her and tells her about her plan to kiss Jacks to prove she’s his true love and won’t die. LaLa thinks it’s a terrible plan but agrees to help anyways.
After Evangeline sneaks out of the camp dressed as a guard, she wanders into the forest alone where LaLa is going to meet her later. Suddenly, Jacks is there, and he starts acting like he’s going to kiss her when she says she got her memories back. Then, Castor appears telling Evangeline that Jacks isn’t safe right now, and as Jacks tries to pull her closer, the glass cuff hurts him enough to pull away.
Chapters 35-36
When they meet in the forest, Aurora brings Apollo to the Tree of Souls in exchange for him not hunting Jacks anymore. When they get to the tree, Wolfric is there to warn away Apollo because the tree grants immortality, but kills the one you love the most. Apollo agrees not to use the tree because he doesn’t want Evangeline to die.
As Castor brings Evangeline farther from Jacks, he tells her how Aurora has always been in love with Jacks who’s never paid her any attention, even pretending to love Lyric to be closer to Jacks. Jacks traded his heart to Aurora for Vengeance Slaughterwood’s cuff for Evangeline, which Aurora had as a wedding present from Vengeance. Castor believes Aurora was keeping Jacks heart near the Hollow and planned to permanently change it, and that’s why he couldn’t love Evangeline right now.
Chapters 37-39
Apollo returns to camp and realizes Evangeline must have escaped because she remembers everything. LaLa and Evangeline find Aurora’s secret lair in a tree near the Hollow and search through her stuff for Jacks’ heart. In her spell book/journal, they find her writing that she put a spell on Jacks that he’d have to kill his first fox after Aurora’s sister has a partial vision that Jacks would fall in love with a fox.
Evangeline and LaLa go looking for Aurora at the Merrywood Village festival after they don’t find Jacks’ heart. Jacks has left a note with a villager for Evangeline not to look for him. They follow a trail of petals into the forest where Aurora finds them saying they’re too late, but she does admit to being the one to put Jacks’ curse on him.
Chapters 40-42
Aurora admits that Jacks stole his heart back because he plans to destroy it in the fire of the Phoenix tree. After LaLa helps Evangeline find an arch, she makes it to Jacks and the tree, and tries to convince him to stop. While he doesn’t seem to listen, Evangeline tells him she’s in love with him to break the archer curse, and kisses him before he can stop her.
During the first small kiss, Jacks drops the jar holding his heart which comes back to him, and he starts kissing Evangeline more fervently. They both can’t stop kissing. And Jacks tells her he’s loves her too.
Chapters 43-44
Evangeline doesn’t die from the kiss, but then Apollo appears by the tree. He pulls a leaf from the tree making it burst into flames. Jacks pushes Evangeline out of the flames because they had been standing against the tree, but in the smoke, Apollo grabs her and ties her up.
Chapters 45-47
Apollo drags Evangeline from the fire through an arch that brings them to a giant tree. Evangeline tries to fight but Apollo won’t let her free.
In the smoke, Jacks tries to follow the sound of Evangeline’s voice through an arch, but when he comes out it’s Aurora. She still tries to get Jacks to choose her, but he threatens her to tell him about where Evangeline is. Jacks makes it into the cavern with the tree, and starts fighting Apollo before two of the Valor brothers hold him back.
Chapters 48-Epilogue
Evangeline tries to get to Jacks who’s being held by the Valor brothers, but she’s still tied up as Wolfric helps Apollo up. After saying goodbye to Evangeline, Apollo cuts a branch off the tree, and drinks the blood coming out from the tree. Suddenly, Apollo starts to die, and Wolfric says it’s because he loves himself the most.
Wolfric apologizes to Evangeline for what she had to go through, but he seems happy to have Apollo out of the way as he leaves with his sons. Jacks grabs hold of Evangeline and says now they can anywhere she wants as long as they’re together.
Read the Full Book Review
Now you can read my honest review for the third book and the entire series including other recommendations if you’re a fan of fantasy romance. If you’re a fan of these beloved characters or author Stephanie Garber, check it out!
