The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison was released in April 2016 and it is the first novel in The Collector Series which follows the same three FBI agents (Eddison, Vic, and Ramirez) throughout the novels. The Butterfly Garden falls under the genres of both a thriller and a police procedural as Hutchison weaves the story through Inara’s words now in a police interview room and as she reminisces on her past, including being held as a prisoner at the Garden. The Butterfly Garden and The Collector Series are not for the faint of heart as Hutchison has created an absolutely haunting story that is both breathtaking and horrifying.
The main characters in The Butterfly Garden are the FBI agents Vic and Eddison, and a girl who survived all of the cruel and vile things that happened at the Garden. At first, she tells them that her name is Maya and that the man who held her and multiple other girls captive, the Gardner, gave her that name. Maya eventually reveals that her name is Inara and the names interchange throughout the story. The story bounces between the Garden where she is referred to as Maya and the interview room where the FBI try to piece together what has happened at the Garden where she is referred to as Inara.
Hutchison does an excellent job at breaking up the story so that the reader is aware of who is narrating throughout the story. When Inara is recounting what has happened at the Garden, the story is told from her voice. At times throughout The Butterfly Garden, the language used for Inara/Maya’s character almost seems unlikely for an eighteen year old. The reader learns about her troubled past and how she has been on her own, fending for herself for as long as she can remember. Hutchison has created a slew of characters for The Butterfly Garden each with their own unique personality and identity and even though a lot of them are secondary characters, Hutchison has done an excellent job at not confusing the reader and constantly has the narrator throw in little things to help the reader remember who a character may be.
Within the novel, there are a group of characters that are bound to develop and deepen relationships with one another as the series progresses. The imagery that Hutchison uses throughout The Butterfly Garden is an oxymoron in itself as she is able to find delicate beautiful words to describe something absolutely heinous, and that is remarkable. While I sometimes found Inara to be slightly pretentious, I really liked her overall character and found that she uses her flaws to her advantage rather than let them hinder her. I’m looking forward to Inara’s presence in the rest of the series. There are pieces of The Butterfly Garden that feel farfetched at times and the ending of the story almost felt like it was an after-thought. While there are some parts of The Butterfly Garden that just didn’t work for me, the overall story was extremely engrossing and I both wanted to keep reading but didn’t want the story to end. I’ll be reading and doing reviews on the remaining Collector Series novels in order so that I can give a fluid review on the series as a whole through each individual book.
The Butterfly Garden is available from Amazon, Book Depository, and other good book retailers, like your local bookstore!
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Synopsis | Goodreads
Near an isolated mansion lies a beautiful garden.
In this garden grow luscious flowers, shady trees…and a collection of precious “butterflies”—young women who have been kidnapped and intricately tattooed to resemble their namesakes. Overseeing it all is the Gardener, a brutal, twisted man obsessed with capturing and preserving his lovely specimens.
When the garden is discovered, a survivor is brought in for questioning. FBI agents Victor Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are tasked with piecing together one of the most stomach-churning cases of their careers. But the girl, known only as Maya, proves to be a puzzle herself.
As her story twists and turns, slowly shedding light on life in the Butterfly Garden, Maya reveals old grudges, new saviors, and horrific tales of a man who’d go to any length to hold beauty captive. But the more she shares, the more the agents have to wonder what she’s still hiding…
