The Butterfly Garden Paperback – June 1, 2016

There is a lot to like in The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison. I first liked the simplicity yet expressiveness of the cover (at least in the Kindle selection I read.) There is a butterfly, the novel’s name, and the author’s name. There are no blaring font announcements that this is a thrilling psychological thriller (that will leave you gasping). No promises that it is a page-turner. Just a good presentation. But it is one of the best psychological thrillers I have read. There are surprises; it will leave a reader turning pages quickly and it will appeal to fans of a TV series “Lie to Me.”The setting of the novel is in an interrogation room, although the questioners would shy away from the term “interrogation.” But that was what was taking place and naming it as anything else would not fool Maya. Special Agent Brandon Eddison and Special Agent in Charge Victor Hanoverian were skilled investigators of crimes committed against children. Maya was a few years shy of twenty-one, but she was streetwise and somewhat amused by the questioning techniques employed by the two FBI agents. After all, they didn’t even know her name. At least they knew her name wasn’t Maya and she intended to play the game out until she decided she wanted to provide her real name.Maya is the central figure in a harem of butterflies created by The Gardener. A rich businessman, he was able to construct a private, fortified garden in which he could indulge his fantasies. Although they had a sexual component, his actual fantasy was that he was saving girls from the street and the hard lives they would have had to lead to survive. The Gardener and his son Avery would kidnap girls that The Gardener would think at risk. They would select girls no younger than sixteen and could be any age up to twenty-one. Older was not better because when a girl reached her twenty-first birthday, she was killed, embalmed, and displayed in containers filled with a resin that kept the body on display. There were many containers that attested to the success of The Gardener’s project.Why butterflies? The gardener liked butterflies; he studied them. After kidnapping a girl, The Gardener selected a butterfly and tattooed its likeness on the shoulders and back of the kidnap victim. Having sex after tattooing each girl finalized his possession ritual. The girls were then free to live in his garden, complete with waterfall, a library and an abundance of plants and trees, until they were twenty-one when they would be expected to join previous butterflies on display. Once a girl was killed, The Gardener would search for a replacement so that the living butterfly collection remained at about twenty-three.This size of the confined population gives the author lots of room for character development and Hutchison does this skillfully. Characters are developed well through their behaviors as near familial relationships are developed and broken. With these many characters, it would be easy for an author to give each one a one or two-line description and move on. Hutchison does not do this as characters appear, seem to go away, and then reappear with a valuable contribution to the story. There are inferences and implications seemingly made by characters, but all done through the filter of Maya’s memories. She exposes each character as much or as little as she wants. Characters “speak” through her. And she has an agenda; she will protect the identity of Maya.Opposing Maya are two FBI agents. Eddison comes off as the heavy, the bad cop, the unintelligent one that Maya has fun manipulating. Maya has realized that Victor Hanoverian might be her equal. She needs to protect her identity until a certain event comes to pass. And she is the only one who knows what the event is. The dialogue between the agents and Maya comes across as very cerebral. The agents had training, but Maya grew up with street survival skills.I do not believe that anyone can predict this ending. What happened to specific girls? Who is The Gardener? What life does he have outside the Garden? Is there any way to escape? The answers to a lot of these questions are answered throughout the novel. But for the big questions, Maya’s identity and Maya’s agenda, you must read the entire novel.The novel’s subject will be difficult for some readers. This is about young girls in captivity being tortured and sexually abused by one or more pedophiles. Knowing the subject, is a warning necessary?This is a good psychological thriller. I gave this five Amazon stars and look forward to reading more Dot Hutchison books.

4.4 out of 5 stars!The Butterfly Garden is a heavy, heart-pounding read. I laughed, I cried, I yelled at the characters, my hands shook, and it hit almost all the right buttons for me.Before I get into the story aspects that I appreciated (and a couple I didn't), I want to say that the format was difficult for me to sink into right away. There are two parallel stories: a present tense third-person narrative in which the FBI are questioning Maya, and a first-person past tense narrative that acts as Maya's responses. The narrative that acts as dialogue didn't really work well initially because you knew she was speaking, yet it contained descriptive details that wouldn't have been conveyed in conversation (like how a character adjusted her bra). However, the story was able to engage me enough to draw me in and acclimate me to the format.Initially, Maya's responses bounce from the Garden to her life before the Garden. Sometimes these lapses killed the tension that had just been built up, but I pushed through, knowing that the lapse would be short and the story continued on just the other side. This ends when we read into Part II (it's a three-part novel), and it is smooth sailing from there.Although the narrative is rife with triggers (sexual assault, child abuse and neglect--mentioned, not witnessed, violence against women, drug addiction), Hutchison is delicate in her delivery. She doesn't get more descriptive until Part II, and even then she focuses more on effect than cause.Each character we meet has something unique about them that sets them apart from the others, even though we encounter about twenty Butterflies, three FBI agents, a few FBI techs, and a few parents. If this makes it sound overwhelming: it's not. They all one have something to make them stand out from one another. I love the rapport Hutchison gave each of these characters. They play off of each other differently and in a believable fashion.That also ramps up the stress and tension, for all the right reasons: We felt for the girls, even if we only met them briefly. They were engaging and unique, so when something horrible happened to them, we mourned. Some we mourned in passing, others we mourned... much longer.<blockquote>“Always. You never had to wait for someone [to die]. You mourned them every single day, as they mourned you, because every day we were dying.”</blockquote>My favorite scene of the entire novel is borne of the bond the Butterflies develop:<blockquote>That afternoon found me in Danelle’s room with a bowl of water in my lap so I could carefully rewet her hair each time I needed to run the brush through it. She sat in front of me on the bed twining ribbons through sections of Evita’s hair before she twisted them up into a mass on the back of her blonde head. For Danelle, I braided small sections of hair to drape between two high buns, and others to fall down her back. They were too thin to obscure the wings, but they were her small defiance. Hailee sat behind me doing something with brush and pins, while Simone stood behind her with ribbons and twists and oil.</blockquote>Hutchison successfully captures the fucked-up psychology that accompanies long-term trauma: dark humor, self-deprecation, and wry acceptance of what occurs and what might occur. These moments might seem unbelievable or surreal for someone who has never been in such a situation, but for someone who has they resonate strongly (speaking as a survivor of three years of domestic violence).<blockquote>It was sick. I don’t think there’s a person there who doubted that. It was sick and wrong and profoundly twisted, and yet somehow it made us feel a lot better.</blockquote>There were several allusions throughout the story that led me to believe Hutchison was foreshadowing something, and I thought I knew what would happen toward the end. I was wrong. I enjoyed being wrong very much.For some readers, The Butterfly Garden will test their suspension of disbelief, mostly concerning the setting:<blockquote>As far as I could tell, the greenhouse we called the Garden was actually one of two, one inside the other like nesting dolls. Ours was the one in the center, impossibly tall, with our hallways wrapped around it in a square.</blockquote>Living near the mountains, I understand very well how a compound like this can be... perhaps not hidden, but inconspicuous enough to overlook or pass by.The only detail of the story that tested my personal suspension of disbelief is at the tail end--and as far as the reader can determine, not an aspect of the conflict. Since I enjoyed the novel overall, and I don't know what the sequels will hold, I am more than willing to overlook what seems to me to be a plot-contrivance fairy.One gripe I have that I can easily overlook is that the Gardener seems a bit bland. We know he has self-control, he's intimidating in what he does and can do, but we don't see him ever doing it. He doesn't lose his temper and is almost always the doting, refined "gentleman," never the frightening, looming threat the Butterflies fear.I personally would love a brief foray into his mind as a short story or novella. But I may end up saying that about every serial killer we encounter on this blog.I enjoyed The Butterfly Garden very much, although in the beginning I sometimes felt the need to push through short sections. I was still desperate to see what would happen on the other side. The tension and emotional impact of the story more than compensate for any flaws with the story or format.

Wow.This was a great thriller and dark read. I’ve always enjoyed when we get an inside look into a serial killers mind and to see how one operates first hand was very intriguing. We get to know “The Gardener” through the eyes of one of the victims. She takes us through her own experience as well as what others had experienced before her. We get to witness the familiar bonds that are created through their shared trauma and witness sweet moments where they rely on one another to vent or escape from their hell for a little. When you’re in a place like the Garden there is no real lapse of time but you know that everyday means you get closer to the ultimate endgame-death. The butterflies were an interesting group and the idea behind their names was twisted. It was fun to read along as our main narrator tells her story and I tried to piece bits together. I had loads of fun reading this one and am excited to read the others in this collectors series!