Fantasy · Read next
Books like Once Upon a Broken Heart
If Once Upon a Broken Heart by Stephanie Garber left a hole in your reading life, here is what actually made it work — and where to find that feeling again.
Once Upon a Broken Heart is fairy-tale logic played completely straight: a heroine who believes in stories makes a bargain with an immortal trickster who runs on them, and every kiss, curse, and favor arrives with storybook rules and hidden costs. The engine is Jacks himself — a love interest whose charm and menace are the same trait, kept deliberately unreadable for books at a time.
'Like Once Upon a Broken Heart' means whimsical-dark rather than grimdark: enchanted cities, bargains with fine print, prophecy used as a plot promise, and a morally gray immortal whose true motive is the series' central mystery. The community picks below were chosen for that storybook shimmer with teeth.
Free from the community
Stories to read after Once Upon a Broken Heart
Where the Old Man and the Tree Commune
SAMSON PERCIOUS
1 11
Chronicles of the Ravenwolf
Stevie Walker
1 20
The Boy Who Was Erased
Thavy rosela
1 15
Collared Constellations
Talinambul
14 20
Enoch: A Journey Beyond the Veil
Bela Umu
5 6
The Unraveling of Divinity
Lumorajournals
11 20
Beyond the Veil: A Starborne Saga
John Barnes
13 20
The Girl and the Girl who That Came to Her from the wall
S.Chapman
The tropes behind Once Upon a Broken Heart
Write the next Once Upon a Broken Heart
The fastest cure for a book hangover is writing the story you wish existed. Steal a premise from our fantasy prompt library:
- “Every citizen receives one spell at birth, chosen by lottery. Yours has been declared illegal — retroactively, as of this morning.”
- “The dragon your village sacrifices to hasn't eaten anyone in two hundred years. You're this year's offering, and you find out why.”
- “Magic is dying, and the last enchanted objects are kept in a museum. You're the night guard, and tonight one of them spoke your name.”