Blurb from Goodreads:
How far would you go for happily ever after?
For as long as she can remember, Evangeline Fox has believed in true love and happy endings…until she learns that the love of her life will marry another.
Desperate to stop the wedding and to heal her wounded heart, Evangeline strikes a deal with the charismatic but wicked Prince of Hearts. In exchange for his help, he asks for three kisses, to be given at the time and place of his choosing.
But after Evangeline’s first promised kiss, she learns that bargaining with an immortal is a dangerous game—and that the Prince of Hearts wants far more from her than she’d pledged. He has plans for Evangeline, plans that will either end in the greatest happily ever after or the most exquisite tragedy….
I very much wanted to like this book and I did? Sort of? It frustrated me, in terms of pacing and, even though it’s clearly part of an ongoing trilogy or series, I was still kind of surprised by the ending, which wasn’t an ending. I would have liked some manner of resolution, rather than feeling that I had read an unfinished book.
However, the imagination behind this story? Fantastic. There’s so much of a world here that I’m fascinated by and even though I was frustrated by this book, I have bought this author’s other series, set in this universe. There’s a suitable amount of intrigue but parts of the book feel rushed, and perhaps there is more depth to come in future books, but I found that a lot of the background characters were very shallow.
The concept is super; a world with magic, where one domain’s history is another domain’s fairytale. There is a heroine who believes in true love and a stepsister who may or may not be wicked. Then there are the Fates, inhuman and immortal (although they may die), who seem to toy with humans. Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, is an intriguing character, with murky morals and a potentially tragic backstory, and I don’t know if the lack of depth in his character is so that we don’t figure him out too quickly but I do think the books suffers for it. I prefer my antagonist or anti-hero to be more compelling, I guess.
Overall, I’m still suitably interested in where the story is going but I think I might wait for the series to be complete before I delve back in.
Thanks to NetGalley for this book.
Rating: 3 stars (maybe not the book for me?)
TL;DR: Unfinished narrative about a plucky heroine whose belief in true love has a knock-on effect throughout kingdoms.
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