Book Review | The Ballad of Never After

It’s taken me a while to get my thoughts down for this one.

The Ballad of Never After
Stephanie Garber

Not every love is meant to be.

After Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, betrays her, Evangeline Fox swears she’ll never trust him again. Now that she’s discovered her own magic, Evangeline believes she can use it to restore the chance at happily ever after that Jacks stole away.

But when a new terrifying curse is revealed, Evangeline finds herself entering into a tenuous partnership with the Prince of Hearts again. Only this time, the rules have changed. Jacks isn’t the only force Evangeline needs to be wary of. In fact, he might be the only one she can trust, despite her desire to despise him.

Instead of a love spell wreaking havoc on Evangeline’s life, a murderous spell has been cast. To break it, Evangeline and Jacks will have to do battle with old friends, new foes, and a magic that plays with heads and hearts. Evangeline has always trusted her heart, but this time she’s not sure she can. . . .

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When I know I’m going to really enjoy a book in a series I often get too excited to go back and re-read the book before, and spend a little bit too long trying to remind myself what happened in the previous story’s events. Luckily what happened in book one came back to me pretty quickly because it was straight into the action with this book.

I wondered if this book would live up to my expectations because I loved the first book of the series and it made it into my top ten the year I read it. So I did have a little trepidation going into this book as I know that sometimes the second book doesn’t quite have the same magic as the first. I was immensely glad that in this case, this book was just as good, maybe even slightly better than the first book.

There are a couple of things that I just loved about this book, firstly Evangeline and Jacks, the chemistry between these two in this book is just superb. The constant will they/won’t they and the way they speak to each other absolutely drew me in, there is something quite wonderful in the way they try to avoid each other but are also like magnets to each other.

The curses and deceptions were brilliant, I really enjoyed not knowing who Evangeline could trust and that she is constantly in this game just trying to stay safe and keep those around her from misfortune. Also, I loved that we got to know more about the stories of some of the characters, it is all starting to click into place and some of the reveals were fascinating.

Luckily I knew that another book was coming in this series because if I had read that ending not knowing that I would have been heartbroken, it was a bit of a punch to the stomach. As soon as I finished it I wanted the next book immediately because I just have to know what happens next, I have had to learn some patience but I’m sure it’ll be worth it when I get my hands on it. One thing I can say for certain is that this book is a definite contender for my top ten this year.