FBI Agents Vic Hanoverian and Brandon Eddison are interrogating one of the survivors of The Garden, a place in which a man (the Gardener) kidnapped and abused several girls. The Gardener tattooed butterflies on the backs of the victims to turn them into his personal collection.

I enjoyed how Vic pushed the survivor to tell her story and how he cared for her during her recount of the events. Even though there was an underlying sense of urgency for Vic to get her story, he still nudges her in a gentle way. I usually don’t like slow-paced books (with a few exceptions) but here it made sense and helped me get a sense of how much time has passed since her capture and the events that led to the Garden’s discovery.

However, I could not wrap my head around how the Garden was hidden in plain sight and sometimes struggled with the space’s descriptions. The twist was pretty convoluted and unnecessary in my opinion. I think learning more about the Gardener and his position in society would have been more interesting. I would have also liked for his motivations to be more explored, the reason given for how he started collecting his “butterflies” did not give much away.

I still gave it a high rating because of Vic, the survivor and the fact that I had a great time reading it. It was quite the page-turner.

Please check the content/trigger warnings before reading!