A review by youonlywishau
A Curse for True Love by Stephanie Garber

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

2.75

slightly lower rating to the second book in the series (edit i came back thirty minutes later to change my rating, if you read the rest of this review you will understand why and my slow decent into madness over this book), it’s a romantasy series and yet this last book was very light on the interactions between
jacks and eva
even though i understand why because of the whole
memory loss plot
but still the romance just fell short in comparison to the last book until the very end. idk maybe it’s just me because i like romance plots that the MCs do obviously have to overcome hurdles to fight for their love and this was that in a sense but it wasn’t done together it was like two seperate plots. plus
even though jacks loved eva he wasn’t fighting to be with her he was fighting to save her which was noble but frustrating at times
because again like i said, it felt like the whole romance wasn’t them overcoming something together it was them constantly being on different pages and failing to align until the very last second which sucked some of the speciality out of it. OKAY now that’s i’ve done ranting about the romance it still was an amazing book, the world building was awesome but not too complex or outlandish and i liked the idea of creating a modern fairytale which was very cute. (edit 20 minutes later) actually i’m not done talking about the romance in this book because it’s REALLY started to piss me off -
jacks as much as i love him, holy shit did he lack a complete sense of any hope when he needed it, like ugh his grumpy “our story doesn’t end good blah blah blah” shit started to get so fucking old like jesus christ grow a fucking pair and TRY FIGURE IT OUT YOU MISERABLE FUCK, idk maybe it’s my own personal disdain for people who sit around and do nothing to solve their problems even though the best thing of there life is waiting on the other side and they acknowledge it and continue to just self-sabotage. like i totally understand why he did what he did but it’s just so annoying to watch people fuck up good things when there was a solution right in front of them they were just too stuck in their miserable judgement to even see it.
okay i think im done for real this time. i’m heated i need to go have a cigarette. (edit, im back, again) JUST BECAUSE HE LOVED HER DOESN'T MEAN HE AUTOMATICALLY GETS AWAY WITH BEING SO FUCKING DIFFICULT. I ADMIT I TOO WAS FOOLED BY JACKS CHARM BUT WHEN YOU LOOK AT IT HE WAS JUST PROTECTING HER AND BEING HOT. IF THATS THE STANDARD THAN WTF BECAUSE HE ALSO TRAMPLED ALL OVER THAT POOR GIRLS HOPE AND LOVE AND HAPPINESS UNTIL SHE LITERALLY WOULD NOT GIVE UP
UNTIL SHE FINALLY FORCED HIM TO KISS HER WHEN HE WAS ABOUT TO BURN HIS FUCKING HEART!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?! SO THEY COULD NEVER BE TOGETHER OUT OF THE NAME OF “PROTECTING HER”?!?!?!?!?!?!
AND THEY FINALLY GOT THEIR HAPPY ENDING. EVA DESERVED THAT HAPPY ENDING JACKS WAS JUST ALONG FOR THE RIDE AND I WILL DIE ON THIS HILL. (edit i’m back, again) it’s the next morning and I'm still angry, there are so many plot holes and I'm fucking pissed, what happened to marisol? luc? dane? lala? i genuinely think the series should have just stopped at the second book - the way that this plot just kept throwing magical loop holes to solve problems that had no previous mention annoyed me, like
wtf do you mean there’s a magical willow that can grant people immortality and it was NEVER MENTIONED BEFORE???? AND IT JUST SO HAPPENED TO CONVENIENTLY KILL OFF THE MAIN ANTAGONIST AT THE LAST SECOND?!?!?!
also it annoyed me that right towards the end it was never truly explained how
eva kissed jacks, you can easily infer and understand that true love was able to break the curse but jacks second heart that allowed him to feel those things WAS OUT OF HIS BODY IN THAT MOMENT??? and then we can also infer it went back into his body too but NOTHING IS EXPLICITLY SAID!!!!
NOW i understand leaving plot holes because it’s a fairytale of sorts, readers are supposed to fill in the gaps which makes sense for Eva and Jacks BUT WHY SPEND SO MUCH TIME GOING INTO STORIES OF SIDE CHARACTERS IF ITS GOING TO BE COMPLETELY IRRELEVANT. The last time we saw Marisol she was running away from
vampire Luc because Jacks was controlling her to do so
and then poof, gone, never to be mentioned again. Even Lala felt like her character fell so short in the last book, she was such a good support for Eva and then was not mentioned in the last book at all
until she finally appeared to help Eva escape Apollo in the last hundred pages with no mention of where or what she had been doing (how fucking convenient am i right)
oh and don’t even get me started on
Eva conveniently finding an arch to get to the phoenix tree before Jacks in under 5 minutes EVEN THOUGH SHE HAD NEVER DONE IT BEFORE AND DIDNT EVEN KNOW WHAT TO LOOK FOR OR WHERE IT WOULD LEAD?!?!?!WHICH WAS ALSO JUST NEVER EXPLAINED?!?!?
I hope and I pray that this is my final thoughts, i have been consumed by this book in a way i wish i never was, cursed if you will. i feel as though the initial veil of happiness towards this novel has been lifted from my eyes and all there is is pain and questions and confusion and burning hell fire. relieve me of this suffering. (i’m back, kill me now) if you want a book that doesn’t make you think too hard then this is your book, but if you want an actually good book with intricate plots and ROMANCE this book is not for you, i recommend reading the first two in the series and then imagining what happened to Jacks and Eva at the end for yourself because this might as well have been fan fiction at this point. i was so excited because it felt like this rich and complex tale that was leading to this big grand finale and then all of a sudden, all of Eva’s problems were solved by these once complex and powerful side characters that were reduced to plot tools, there was no mention to previous plot lines in the other books (other than Apollos vanity, the phoenix tree and the archer/fox ballad which btw was painfully obvious Jack was the archer all along, i picked that up halfway through the first book) and then also S.G. sidelined THE MAIN LOVE INTEREST FOR MOST OF THE BOOK, SPOILER ALERT THERES NO ROMANCE UNTIL THE LAST 50 PAGES AND EVEN THEN IT FEELS LIKE JACKS WAS WRITTEN BY A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON. and don’t even get me staaaaaarted on how helpless Evangeline was in this entire series, not ONCE (I FUCKING CHECKED) did she get out of a sticky situation by herself, she was always rescued or helped or aided in some way, i’m so fucking sick and tired of skinny little helpless FMCs, BRING ME THE BADDIES THAT WERE BORN FROM HELL FIRE AND THE FORCE OF A THOUSAND SUNS I WANT TO SEE THEM DESTROY AN ENTIRE FUCKING CONTINENT RIP THEIR OWN FLESH OFF AND EAT IT THEN RESURRECT AS A FUCKING GOD OF DEATH THAT BRINGS KINGS TO THEIR KNEES AT THE MERE THOUGHT OF THEM. i had a GLIMMER tiny little GLIMMER of hope when jacks was going to teach her defense lessons but oops hehe giggle giggle no it was just an excuse to put his hands all over her hahaha and she learnt NOTHING!!!! SURPRISE SURPRISE. I’m deleting this fucking app so i can’t touch this review again, i'm putting myself in timeout.