About the Book
Title: A Heart So Fierce and Broken
Author: Brigid Kemmerer
Series: Cursebreakers #2
Genre: YA Fantasy
Pages: 450
Edition Read: Kindle eBook
Dates Read: March 1-4, 2025
Blurb: The curse is finally broken, but Prince Rhen of Emberfall faces darker troubles still. Rumors circulate that he is not the true heir and that forbidden magic has been unleashed in Emberfall. Although Rhen has Harper by his side, his guardsman Grey is missing, leaving more questions than answers.
Win the crown, save the kingdom.
Rumored to be the heir, Grey has been on the run since he destroyed Lilith. He has no desire to challenge Rhen–until Karis Luran once again threatens to take Emberfall by force. Her own daughter Lia Mara sees the flaws in her mother’s violent plan, but can she convince Grey to stand against Rhen, even for the good of Emberfall?
The heart-pounding, compulsively readable saga continues as loyalties are tested and new love blooms in a kingdom on the brink of war.
Review
I’m very glad that I picked this series to read. I had enjoyed the first book, A Curse So Dark and Lonely, but never revisited this world once the next books were released. Enough of that!
The first book was sort of (from what I remember) marketed as a Beauty and the Beast retelling, or a deconstruction of that tale as old as time, since Harper isn’t a classic “beauty” and she meets “the beast” when he’s still human. It still had loads of elements that harkened back to that original story – young girl trapped in a castle where the prince has been put under a curse by a cruel enchantress, with the only way for the prince to break said curse is to get someone to fall in love with him. A Heart So Fierce and Broken deals with the aftermath.
Did we really think that the prince in that story would just be perfectly fine once the curse was gone, despite losing everything and being a prisoner in his own house for years?
Would his kingdom still be safe and secure without a ruler there to protect it?
The answer to both of those questions is a resounding “no.” Rhen is definitely not okay and the kingdom has been crumbling in the intervening years, with many of the citizens angry and being abandoned in their time of need. A powerful neighboring kingdom is threatening war and Rhen is in no way prepared to fight. Put that together with the fact that Gray – his right hand, the only one who was there for him during the curse – is just gone. Yeah, our boy is not okay. At all.
What was fun about this book is that we got Gray’s story as well. He was in the periphery for all of the first book, but we find out a lot more about this stoic solider in this one. He has a lot more secrets that we ever knew the first time around, some of which he doesn’t even know himself. We also get to learn a bit more about this dangerous neighboring kingdom (or I should say queendom) and they are pretty terrifying. Most of them, anyway.
Oh, and that evil enchantress? She may still be lurking around somewhere.
This book was a complete surprise and I enjoyed every minute of it.
GoodReads rating: 5 stars
Categories: Books I've Read
Life With No Plot 
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