I requested The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison thanks to one of my trusted Bookstagram readers, and given the number of novels I had to read in a short time, I gave it to my mum to read first. She zoomed through it. I just finished it, and even being under the weather couldn’t prevent me from getting the reading zoomies with this one.

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 saviours, 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…

Content Warning: The Butterfly Garden is a horror mystery thriller that contains scenes of sexual assault, rape, violence, kidnapping, and more. Please check warnings before you begin, and always listen to yourelf you you feel uncomfortable with what you read.

The Butterfly Garden is rough, dark, and has an isolated feel to the storytelling. This makes sense given there are two perspectives – third person focusing on Agent Victor Hanoverian and his interviews with our main character, and first-person retelling of the events inside the garden by Maya. This flow between first and third person works exceptionally well to showcase that absolute horror and deep-seated fear of living in the garden, putting the reader in the shoes of the girls and in a way making us feel like one of them, bringing us along to experience all the pain and humiliation and internalised emotions that come with being a butterfly.

This landscape and scenery has been developed so brilliantly, describe in exquistite detail, and is genuinely terrifying to think about. I don’t want to say too much about it because thedescription is one of the most impressive things about this novel, but the way in which these girls, especially Maya, had to live their daily lives surrounded by the displays is harrowing. Story details and settings like this are what make a book truly terrifying, horrific, and contribute to that underlying compulsion that these books have. This is not a story I am likely to forget about anytime soon.

And good thing I don’t have to because there is a seres, and I have already requested The Roses of May for my mum and I to devour as soon as it is ready for pick up. Dot Hutchison is a mastermind dark thriller mystery writer, her writing style is impressive and engaging, and I cannot wait to see what the rest of this series reveals. If you like the darker crime investigation shows like Criminal Minds or SVU, I highly recommend giving The Butterfly Garden and The Collector series a go. It is the perfect dark scary read for October.