By Amie Kealy
*Beware, spoilers ahead. Tread carefully, those who dare to read.*
As I may have mentioned in my previous review on Once Upon a Broken Heart and The Ballad of Never After, I’ve been waiting not-so-patiently for A Curse of True Love to be released. And it was definitely worth the wait!
Although from start to finish, it wasn’t jam packed with action, the slow unfolding of the plot was almost whimsical, it felt like being whisked away to a fairy tale, leisurely being presented with the final bits of the puzzle.
At the end of The Ballad of Never After, we see Apollo wipe all of Evangeline’s memories away so that she doesn’t remember her time in the Magnificent North, and more importantly, she doesn’t remember Jacks! I just about died thinking that she would never remember all their sweet, tension-filled moments together. For the first 100 pages of A Curse of True Love, it seems like not a lot happens; Evangeline is coming to terms with her missing memories and is trying to get comfortable with the husband she doesn’t remember and the feeling that she is forgetting something, or shall we say someone, important. The plot only starts to heat up when Evangeline is unceremoniously pushed into a well and saved by none other than Jacks. Even though Evangelinedoesn’t remember Jacks for who he was to her, there’s something about him that she finds herself gravitating towards.
I really liked that in this book we also had chapters told from Apollo and Jacks’ point of view because it was nice being able to see into their heads and glimpse at the motivations behind their actions. Jacks knows he needs to stay away from Evangeline so that he doesn’t accidently kill her with his kiss, but he just can’t seem to stay away. And Apollo tries to justify his heinous actions by blaming it on his father who said in order to be a revered King, one has to do something worthy of being remembered – if you ask me, that’s just a poor excuse for having questionable morals.
My favourite part of the book was where Jacks and Evangeline were in the cursed forest and we learn that the best day Jacks had ever had in his WHOLE entire existence was the day he and Evangeline shared together in The Hollow. I was screaming at this point, quite confident in my hopes that we’d get a happy ending.
From Jacks’ saving Evangeline in the well, Jacks and Evangeline have multiple interactions that eventually lead to her lost memories coming back- at this point, Jacks has finally resolved to leave Evangeline alone and she becomes hopeless that she’ll never see him again!
But, like all good fairytales, true love prevails. After overcoming the wicked Aurora Valour and getting Jacks’ heart back, we see Jacks and Evangeline walk away together in bliss, his kiss no longer a means by which to kill girls, because Evangeline’s love for Jacks proved stronger than even that curse. So, all in all, it was a very satisfying read and ended the way I was hoping it would.
As an aside, I though the fact that it was Aurora who cursed Jacks and was pining after him for so long seemed a little out of nowhere, but I guess we did need a villain for our heroine to overcome. And who doesn’t enjoy just a little bit of a love triangle? Although in this case, it’s more of a love square, if you include Apollo.
Overall, I couldn’t have asked for a better conclusion to the trilogy; it was such a comfort read and I plan on reading it again very soon! Although Jacks’ and Evangeline’s story has come to a close, the end of the book hints that we could get more stories from this world, focusing on other characters, so it will be interesting to see who is written about next. If I had to guess, I would say LaLa and Chaos.
The only thing we never get a clear answer to was why Jacks ate the apples. But like all fairytales, sometimes mystery is needed to keep the story alive.