Reviews with content warning for Sexual assault - The Butterfly Garden

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Reviews tagging 'Sexual assault'

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison

232 reviews

onemorepagecrew's review against another edition

4.5

The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchinson was not on my radar until Erica (@wittyreading) shared it to her feed. She reads creepy, disturbing books and I get a lot of my recs from her, so naturally I was curious. It’s under 300 pages so we buddy read it quickly and it held my attention start to finish.

In this story, we meet Maya who is a key witness helping to explain what happened in a place where she was held captive. The story is told primarily through her flashbacks and recounting and it’s quite effective at building a very slow, creepy setting. Her personality and voice were probably my favorite part of the book, and the audio edition really added to the effect.

This book was published in 2016 and is classified as horror, but it’s not heavy on body horror or gore. It’s more of a slow, terrible situation that you become enmeshed with as a reader. The whole book takes place in awful circumstances, but the young girls and women in the book are written with such depth that I wasn’t wincing or tense reading it. The sadness was palpable throughout the whole thing, and I just wanted to know more about their story and see them to the end. All in, this is a solid choice if you can handle a terrible concept (kidnapping and holding young girls / women captive) with a methodical unveiling of how it all went down.

Content warnings: kidnapping, sexual assault, self-harm

Content Warnings

clougreen's review

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dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.5

I would give this a 3.5 but not a 4. I went into the book completely blind because I honestly forgot to read the description before I added it on my kindle. I really appreciated the dual timeline and perspectives to really help develop the story as well as the characters you met in the Garden. I think ultimately the story was a tad darker than I was initially anticipated and for that reason I probably won't read the rest of the series. Overall, the writing style was easy to read and the pace moved steadily to keep me invested.

Content Warnings

gabbyreynolds's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional sad slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

Content Warnings

_terah_hansen_'s review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional reflective sad medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

sawyer722's review

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dark emotional sad fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

The book was fairly fast-paced, it never felt it was dragging on in any places. I think the ending left some things to be desired but it was overall a good read. If you like dark books, thrillers or crime related books you’ll probably enjoy this one. I would recommend it if you’re in a reading rut— I finished the book in a day and a half.

Content Warnings