Book Review: The Butterfly Garden

Title: The Butterfly Garden

Author: Dot Hutchison

Publisher: Thomas & Mercer

Year: 2016

Pages: 276

Genre: Mystery/Thriller

Rating: 5 stars

One sentence summary: FBI agents investigate the aftermath of a mass kidnapping where young girls were kept captive in a secret garden and tattooed to resemble butterflies.

A full synopsis of this book can be found on Goodreads.

Spoiler Level:Low

This book was *almost* perfect. If I could, I might knock off a quarter or half star, but overall I think the rest of the story made up for the issues I had with it so I'm sticking with my gut reaction of 5 stars. This book was so beautiful and so disturbing, and I truly loved every minute of it. The writing itself is gorgeous. The descriptions of the garden and the Butterflies were colourful and vivid without being overly descriptive or flowery. The way the author weaved in the events of the Garden with the present interrogation of the main character, Maya, and the small flashbacks to her life before the Garden was extremely well done, amping up the suspense and keeping me glued to the pages. I seriously had trouble putting this book down and finished it in only a couple of sittings. The story involves graphic scenes of rape and abuse, but they weren't gratuitous and many scenes were written in a fade-to-black style that left the gruesome details up to the imagination. However, that's not to say the images we are provided with are in any way mild or easy to read. One scene in particular near the end had me extremely emotionally disturbed, so if that's not a thing you can handle I wouldn't suggest reading this. For all the dark scenes though, there were scenes that made my heart lighter. Overall, I just felt an extreme emotional attachment at certain places in this book, and I think that was because of the excellent writing and the way it examined topics of friendship, grief, and hope. I really enjoyed the characters in this book, from the Special Agents interrogating Maya, to Maya herself, as well as the whole cast of girls we meet from the Garden and her past. Maya is a mysterious and interesting character. As you peel back the layers of her story, you start to discover her sense of humour, her compassion for others, and her grief surrounding her sad childhood, and I really enjoyed getting to know her. I also liked how we meet so many of the girls, even though there is a large cast. Each one has their own distinct personality and has a part to play in Maya's life. We get to know the victims of trauma and abuse on such an individual and personal basis, rather than just seeing them as background figures, which is essential because the book centers around the friendships Maya makes. Developing compassion and grief for the ones who move in and out of her life really emphasizes the themes of love and loss so poignant in this book. The villains of the story are also well-crafted. The Gardener is obviously a very bad man, but moments of kindness and his motivations make him more complex and interesting. His two sons, Avery and Desmond, were also complex and evil to varying degrees; one was a total psychopath and the other was complacent to the horrors that unfold, but both inherently wanted to please their father. I was initially worried about the direction of the relationship between Desmond and Maya, but as Maya's true feelings were revealed I was pleased with how it turned out to be less romance-y and more of a plot point. I feel like there wasn't too much plot going on, being more character-based, but the unfolding of the events had a propelling movement that kept the story moving forward. As I mentioned, I enjoyed learning about Maya's past before her kidnapping as it was interspersed with the Garden and the present day. The events that lead up to the destruction of the Garden and the girls' escape was especially riveting as one of the more action based scenes. And here comes my one criticism of the book: the ending. The "twist" ending was barely a twist at all, came basically out of nowhere, and was irrelevant to the story. It barely made any sense and kind of soured the last few pages of the book. However, because it came so last minute in the story and barely affected it at all, I'm just going to pretend it didn't happen. The rest of the book was just so amazing that I think it makes up for the lackluster ending. Overall, I loved this one.