The Butterfly Garden’s Spoiler-Free Plotline
Main character: Maya is being questioned by 2 FBI agents after the “Garden” has been discovered, where Maya tells the story of how she was kidnapped, tattoos, and basically enslaved to a man referred to as “The Gardener”.
Maya then goes into detail about how these girls are kept in the Garden and cared for by “the Gardener” until the age of 21, where they are then killed and preserved in resin to preserve their youth.
This twisted series goes over issues such as sex-trafficking, sex-workers, SA, and child-related crimes. There are no trigger warnings provided prior to the start of the book.
The Butterfly Garden was recommended to me as a “dark, twisted, gory thriller”
The Twisted Side: This book has described brutal beating of minors, as well as drugging and trafficking young women into “the Garden”, There is also touching subjects on some of these women with Stockholm syndrome. However, the sexual content in this book was not as explicit as I was expecting it to be. The author has made a great attempt to avoid detailed sexual scenes, more than likely due to the age of these characters in the book. Instead, the author inserts ways how the character disassociates in order to avoid conflict with the Gardener.
There is gory detail based around physical assault including branding and beatings, related more to domestic violence.
There is a sick sense of, what seems to me, like a farmer to beloved animals from the Gardener to these girls. There are times where the characters describe the Gardener as someone who “truly cares for them”, as seen when he is protecting them from his sons. This gives the whole idea of the Gardener and the Garden its base for a sickening, demoralizing view on young women and girls for their youth. The idea that youth is to be preserved and is the most attractive form of women is the seeming premise of the Gardener.
Maya also goes into detail about her background and childhood, which is not great to say the least. Maya has a strong form of independence, and a mindset that says “I have myself and that is all I need”. However, she does make some friends along the way when she moves to New York and makes a change for herself. Her friendships with other women have established a wariness for those around her, but not distrusting in everyone, which makes her a more relatable character.
The Turn Off
This book was good, however, the ending was more than unsatisfying to me. There is not much detail I can go into without spoiling much of the ending, however the plot twist was not one I saw coming. The author of this series also wrote a young adult fantasy called “A Wounded Name”.
Given this, The Butterfly Garden ending seems to have ended like I would have expected a fantasy series, where there was a hero and a villain with high stakes and a ticking clock, it pops off like a firecracker. The plot twist was revealed in the last few pages of the book, separated from the big finale. There was a feeling of disconnection in the writing between the two, and the flow of the story became more jagged.
Overall
I think The Butterfly Garden is a great “transition” series from lighter thrillers and mystery to the dark, gory thrillers. I think this book had a good execution of gore to introduce readers to a darker series. This is not the darkest thriller I have ever read, nor the most complicated in writing styles, so this is a great book to grab if you are looking for something on the darker side without jumping into graphic details.
If you are somebody who has been dipping their toes into thrillers, hugging to other series like “The Silent Patient” or authors like Frieda McFadden, but are itching to branch out to something with more taboo subjects, I think this is a good book to start out with.
Leave a Reply