The Ballad of Never After by Stephanie Garber

Read Dates: May 12, 2023 – May 15, 2023
Publication Date: September 13, 2022
Source: Owned hardback

Goodreads — Amazon

Annnnnnd we’re back and things are wild! We ended on a cliffhanger in book one and I expect no less from this one. But let’s start at the beginning here.

In case you haven’t read the first book, I won’t give any of the plot away but, Evangeline finds herself pulled one way to help Apollo and another way to potentially help Jacks. She hasn’t decided just how much she wants to help Jacks just yet. I mean, he’s morally gray. Ya know? How much should she trust this guy? (I was all in from book one but no one should ever follow my example when it comes to these book boyfriends… I mean characters).

“I hurt everyone, Little Fox. But you have to be alive to hate me.” His eyes iced over. “I do not want you dead, and I’ll kill anyone who tries.”

Oh oh! And remember that guy she loved who she accidentally turned to stone during his wedding?

Anywho, this book was somehow more soul-crushing than the first. I was literally SOBBING in multiple places. I was torn and stitched together and then torn right back to little tiny pieces! The cliffhanger in this one was MUCH WORSE than the one we were handed in book one. This cliffhanger was absolutely unbearable. Talk about a book hangover. I’m telling ya, nothing is going to cure this book hangover. NOTHING. Not until I get my hands on book three. And then I’ll probably just have ANOTHER book hangover that, I’m betting, will be worse than the first and second combined.

This has easily become one of my favorite series of the year and I haven’t even finished it yet.

“There is nothing of equal value to me.”

This one SENT ME.

Jacks. That’s it. That’s the paragraph.

I might quite literally perish before October arrives. (I realize now, posting this months after October, that this doesn’t really apply but it’s how I felt at the time of writing this review. So, it stays.)