"Non tutti gli amori sono per sempre."
That line hit me at like 2:47 AM while I was hunched over my desk color-grading a video, ring light still blazing, empty Hot Cheetos bag next to my laptop. I had this playing through my headphones as background vibes, and suddenly Chiara Leoncini dropped that opener and I literally stopped mid-edit. Hands off the trackpad. Just... sat there.
So here's the thing. This is the Italian audiobook edition of Stephanie Garber's A Curse for True Love — the finale of the Once Upon a Broken Heart series — and if you've been following Evangeline and Jacks the Prince of Hearts, you already know the TENSION between these two could power a small city. The question is: does the audiobook version in Italian deliver that tension in audio form?
Garber's World Hits Different When Someone Else Is Driving
Let me be real with you. I went into this as someone who devoured the Caraval series and the first OUABH book like they were oxygen. Garber builds these worlds that feel like walking through a fever dream — everything sparkly and dangerous and slightly unhinged. Farthest Shore gave me that same fever-dream disorientation where the world feels just slightly tilted off its axis and you're fully surrendered to it. And in audio? You either get a narrator who understands the assignment or you get someone reading a fairy tale to a kindergarten class. Chiara Leoncini falls somewhere interesting on that spectrum.
The Italian narration adds this layer of... drama? Like inherently? Italian as a language just carries romantic weight differently. When Evangeline is fighting with herself about trusting Jacks again, the Italian phrasing stretches the emotional beats in ways English sometimes compresses. That said — and I gotta keep it honest — I couldn't find much specific feedback about Leoncini's character differentiation or her handling of the spicier moments. The research is pretty thin on narrator details, which makes me think she's competent but not the kind of performance people are writing dissertations about. She didn't pull anyone OUT of the story, but nobody's screaming "this narrator changed my LIFE" either.
The Evangeline Problem (She's Giving... Homework)
Okay so here's where the Italian listeners and I are aligned: multiple reviewers said this second book feels like Garber "si accontenta di fare il compitino per casa" — basically did the homework assignment but didn't go for the A+. And YEAH. I felt that in my chest around hour 5. The pacing slows down compared to the first book. The prophecy stuff with the Arco del Valory drags in places where I needed momentum.
Evangeline's whole "I'll do everything alone" arc? Baby girl, we've SEEN this trope. Multiple times. In this exact subgenre. The cliché complaint is real — "le solite scene cliché, le solite storie d'amore trite" as one reviewer put it. And at 9 hours 46 minutes, you FEEL those familiar beats stretching.
But then — BUT THEN — when Garber lets Eve and Jacks actually be in the same room? When the walls come down and the attraction stops being subtext? The tension is chef's kiss. That slow gravitational pull between two people who are terrible for each other but can't stop orbiting? Garber still knows how to write that specific brand of ache. One listener literally called the whole experience "un immenso sogno" — an immense dream — and when the book is cooking, it IS that.
Spice Report: Simmering But Not Boiling
Spice level: present but restrained. This is Garber — she's always been more about the almost-kiss than the actual kiss, the hand on the waist rather than the full scene. If you're coming for explicit spice, you'll be waiting a while. The romantic tension does most of the heavy lifting. Jacks going from scheming prince to someone whose only goal becomes happiness WITH Evangeline? That character shift is the real spice here. The emotional kind.
At 2.0x speed this is manageable — around 5 hours of actual listening — and honestly the pacing benefits from the bump. The slower middle section tightens up nicely when you're not dragging through every contemplative paragraph at normal speed.
Who Gets the Aux Cord (And Who Gets Skipped)
If you loved C'era una volta un cuore spezzato (the first book), you're finishing this series regardless of what I say. Just know it's a slightly slower ride. If you're new to Garber — start with Caraval, not here. And if you're specifically choosing between reading this in English vs. listening in Italian, the Italian adds romantic atmosphere but you might miss some character voice nuance that a more distinctive English narrator could bring. Skip this one if you need fast pacing and zero recycled tropes — the saggy middle will test your patience.
My 2AM Verdict: Pretty, Flawed, Still Ate
I finished this at like 4 AM, LED lights still purple, my editing completely abandoned. Was it perfect? No. Did Garber phone in some plot beats? A little. Did I still feel something when Jacks and Eve finally stopped fighting fate? Absolutely. This is cotton candy romantasy — beautiful, sweet, dissolves fast, and you'll probably forget the specific plot points within a week. But the FEELING lingers. And sometimes that's enough.
