What Happened in A Curse for True Love? Recap Before the Mirror (2026)

BookBinge · 2026-10-13

What happened at the end of A Curse for True Love?

At the end of A Curse for True Love (2023), Evangeline Fox gets her stolen memories back, kisses Jacks, the Prince of Hearts, and survives a kiss that was supposed to kill any girl who loved him, while Apollo drinks from the Tree of Souls for immortality and is pulled into its trunk because the only person he loves is himself. Evangeline and Jacks walk away together, and their story continues in The Mirror of Infinite Endings, a short illustrated companion novella that Flatiron Books published on September 22, 2026.

Spoiler warning: this recap spoils all three Once Upon a Broken Heart novels, through the last chapter of A Curse for True Love. Nothing here guesses at The Mirror of Infinite Endings beyond what Stephanie Garber and her publishers have announced.

Who this recap is for

A Curse for True Love came out in 2023, so if you're picking up the novella now, your memory of the trilogy is a few years old. These books pile up curses, bargains and stones, and the details blur fast. This refresher covers who did what to whom, so the novella's opening at the Hollow makes sense. Our Once Upon a Broken Heart reading order lists all four books.

Book 1: Once Upon a Broken Heart (2021)

Evangeline Fox lives in Valenda and loves Luc Navarro, who is about to marry her stepsister, Marisol. Desperate, she goes to the church of the Prince of Hearts, one of the Fates, and makes a deal with Jacks: he stops the wedding, and she owes him three kisses, given when and where he chooses. At the wedding the whole party turns to stone. The only way to free them is for someone to drink poison in their place, so Evangeline does.

Poison, another Fate, cures her six weeks later. Valenda calls her a savior and calls Marisol the cursed bride. When Evangeline goes north to the Nocte Neverending, where Crown Prince Apollo Acadian is choosing a bride, Jacks tells her to kiss Apollo that night or die. Apollo falls for her on the spot and they marry. For the second kiss, Jacks takes her to the Fortuna castle, where she sees the Valory Arch and a prophecy that a key will open it.

When Evangeline gives Apollo the kiss meant to break his enchantment, he appears to die, and she is blamed. With Jacks she tracks the killer through Chaos's vampire lair, where she finds Luc caged and turned into a vampire. Marisol, now engaged to Apollo's brother Tiberius, tells the guards Evangeline confessed. A truth antidote ends that: Tiberius admits he killed Apollo by mistake while trying to poison Evangeline, because his order, the Protectorate, wants the Arch kept shut. In the last pages Evangeline learns Apollo isn't dead, only suspended in a sleep beneath the castle, and she decides Jacks has been using her as the key to the Arch.

Book 2: The Ballad of Never After (2022)

Evangeline now knows her blood can open any locked door. Apollo wakes, but under two curses. The Archer's curse makes him hunt the girl he loves, which is her, and a mirror curse means any harm done to one of them happens to the other. To break them, she makes a new bargain with Jacks to open the Valory Arch, which needs four missing stones: luck, truth, mirth and youth.

The hunt takes them through Chaos's castle, the Slaughterwood estate and an inn in Merrywood where curses don't work. Evangeline pieces together an old tragedy: the Valors, the North's ancient royal family, the doomed Merrywood house, and Jacks's own past. He was once a mortal boy, and he is the Archer from the ballad of the Archer and the Fox. The girl he loved died when he kissed her, and every girl since has died the same way, except Donatella, the one girl immune to his kiss.

At the Arch, Chaos is revealed as Castor Valor, the lost prince of that family, and he drains Evangeline's blood. She dies in Jacks's arms. Jacks uses the stones to go back in time and stop it, and in the new timeline he pushes her away to keep her safe. Apollo then finds her at the Arch's door, says his curse is broken, and uses magic to wipe every memory she has of Jacks.

Book 3: A Curse for True Love (2023)

Evangeline wakes at Wolf Hall married to Apollo with a year of her life missing. Apollo tells her Jacks stole her memories and poisoned him, and the North hunts Jacks for it. The truth is the reverse: Apollo took her memories himself because she chose Jacks. Jacks stays close in disguise as a palace guard, and a letter Evangeline wrote to herself before her memories were taken brings them back.

The new villain is Aurora Valor, another member of the Valor family, who is back after centuries. Evangeline learns that Aurora is the one who cursed Jacks to kill the girl he loves. Jacks has also given Aurora his loving heart in exchange for the Slaughterwood cuff, which stops Apollo from hurting Evangeline. Apollo, meanwhile, wants immortality from the Tree of Souls.

Aurora warns Evangeline that only a girl who will never love Jacks can survive his kiss. Jacks has gone to the royal phoenix tree to destroy his heart in its fire, so he'll stop feeling anything. Evangeline finds him there, tells him she loves him and kisses him. She loses consciousness and wakes up alive, the proof that his curse no longer rules them.

Apollo sets the phoenix tree on fire and drags Evangeline to the Tree of Souls to sacrifice her. Jacks follows, but the Valors hold him back, and Wolfric Valor, who planted the tree, refuses to step in. Apollo drinks the tree's blood. The tree takes the life of the person the drinker loves most, and because Apollo loves only himself, it pulls him into its trunk. The Valors go after Aurora, and Evangeline and Jacks walk out of the cavern together.

What's still open after book 3

• Aurora Valor. The book ends with her family going after her, not with her defeat.
• The Valors. The North's old royal family is awake and powerful after centuries, with Wolfric unbothered by what his tree did to Apollo.

What's confirmed about The Mirror of Infinite Endings

• Release: September 22, 2026, from Flatiron Books in the US and Gollancz in the UK. Some retailers list September 29; the publisher listings give the 22nd.
• Format: a novella, which Gollancz calls a Jacks and Evangeline novella. It's illustrated by Lotusbubble. Retail listings give 224 or 256 pages depending on the edition.
• Premise: Evangeline and Jacks are settled at the Hollow and getting it ready for a grand reopening. In town with LaLa, Evangeline walks into a new shop with a mirror that shows other endings to a person's life, steps into one, and Jacks has to find a way to bring her back.
• What comes next: neither Garber nor her publishers had announced another Once Upon a Broken Heart book as of October 2026.

The novella also nods to Garber's earlier Caraval books, since Jacks and the Fates first appeared there, but you don't need them to follow Evangeline's story.

Keeping track of where you are

BookBinge is an iPhone app that keeps 333 series in reading order, Once Upon a Broken Heart included, and remembers which book you're on. Mark the books you've finished and it writes a spoiler-free recap from those books only. It stops exactly where you stopped, so someone who finished The Ballad of Never After hears nothing about the Tree of Souls.

It's free to start, with one AI recap included and up to three series active at once. Pro, at $24.99 a year with a 3-day free trial, adds unlimited recaps and series.

Related reading

• Once Upon a Broken Heart books in order
• How to never lose your place in a book series
• Publication order vs chronological order
• Best fantasy series reading orders

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