Once Upon a Broken Heart Books in Order

Once Upon a Broken Heart takes place in the same broad universe as Caraval, but it has a different center of gravity. The series follows Evangeline Fox, a romantic believer who is desperate enough to make a bargain with Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, to stop the wedding of the boy she loves. That one choice throws her into the Magnificent North, a place of cursed churches, legendary families, hidden doors, and old stories that do not stay safely in the past.

Everything starts with a bad deal and gets worse in the most entertaining way.

The Magnificent North is one of the big pleasures of the series. It feels less like a court fantasy world and more like a shelf full of fairy tales that someone has shaken up. There are storybook houses, dangerous ballads, forgotten histories, and rules that sound almost silly until they turn lethal. Garber uses all of that to create a setting where emotion carries real magical weight. A kiss, a promise, a memory, or a rumor can change everything.

Evangeline is the emotional anchor. She wants love, yes, but she also wants meaning, truth, and a life that feels chosen rather than assigned. Opposite her is Jacks, who is charming, frustrating, often selfish, and tied to some of the series' darkest magic. Their push and pull shapes all three main books. So do the questions around trust, curses, missing pieces of the past, and whether fate is something you can outsmart or only survive.

These books lean more openly into romance than Caraval, but they are not soft or cozy all the way through. The tone is dreamy, sharp, and a little wicked. There are balls, castles, and pretty gowns, but there is also blood in the snow and danger behind every promise. If Caraval often feels like a game, this series feels like a fairy tale that knows happily ever after usually comes with a trap door.

Readers can start here without finishing Caraval first, but people who already know Jacks from Legendary and Finale will catch extra layers in the way he is written. The connection is real, yet Evangeline's story has its own voice, its own stakes, and its own rhythm.

The world continues with The Mirror of Infinite Endings, a companion novella that returns to Jacks and Evangeline after the original trilogy and suggests that even a hard won ending may not be as settled as it looks.