Book Review: THE BUTTERFLY GIRL (Naomi Cottle #2) by Rene Denfeld

Title: THE BUTTERFLY GIRL (Naomi Cottle #2)

Author: Rene Denfeld
Publisher: Harper
Read: September 2019

Expected publication: 1 October 2019

My Rating: 🌟🌟🌟

Book Description:

A year ago, Naomi, the investigator with an uncanny ability for finding missing children, made a promise that she would not take another case until she finds the younger sister who has been missing for years. Naomi has no picture, not even a name. All she has is a vague memory of a strawberry field at night, black dirt under her bare feet as she ran for her life.

The search takes her to Portland, Oregon, where scores of homeless children wander the streets like ghosts, searching for money, food, and companionship. The sharp-eyed investigator soon discovers that young girls have been going missing for months, many later found in the dirty waters of the river. Though she does not want to get involved, Naomi is unable to resist the pull of children in need—and the fear she sees in the eyes of a twelve-year old girl named Celia. Running from an abusive stepfather and an addict mother, Celia has nothing but hope in the butterflies—her guides and guardians on the dangerous streets. She sees them all around her, tiny iridescent wisps of hope that soften the edges of this hard world and illuminate a cherished memory from her childhood—the Butterfly Museum, a place where everything is safe and nothing can hurt her.

As danger creeps closer, Naomi and Celia find echoes of themselves in one another, forcing them each to consider the question: Can you still be lost even when you’ve been found? But will they find the answer too late?

My musings:

I absolutely loved Denfeld’s previous novel  THE CHILD FINDER, and couldn’t wait to hear more about Naomi and her quest to find missing children. 

In THE BUTTERLY GIRL, Naomi’s search for her missing sister takes her to the city of Portland, Oregon, where countless children are forced to live on the streets. Lately, several bodies of young homeless girls have been found in the river, and the word is out in the homeless community that a killer is targeting the city’s most vulnerable. Among those children is Celia, a young girl who has been forced to escape the nightly visits by her stepfather by leaving home and living on the streets, after her drug addict mother and the justice system have failed to protect her from sexual abuse. To survive the horror and bleakness of life on the streets, Celia’s mind conjures up butterflies – hundreds of bright, colourful creatures that give her solace and accompany her wherever she goes.

I love the way Denfeld manages to bring her fictional characters to life in such a way that they haunted me long after I finished the story. Celia is a character who will steal your heart – I just wanted to give her a hug! Denfeld, who has been homeless and living on the streets herself as a kid, is not afraid to expose the sinister side of the city many of us never get to see, but she does so with empathy and hope that salvation is possible, and that the lost can be found. I find it inspiring and heart warming how the author herself has been, and still is, a foster parent, giving a loving home to many children in need. So despite themes that are sad and heart breaking, Denfeld’s writing is lyrical and uplifting, the way Celia’s butterflies create a rainbow swirl of hope in her mind and readers’ hearts.

I found that in this book, Celia features more prominently than Naomi, who is so intent on her quest to find her lost sister that she has little energy left to fight for the many homeless children she encounters in the city, Celia among them. For me, Celia was definitely the star of the story here. Her chapters are raw and will undoubtedly trigger a lot of emotions in readers. As a parent, I found her scenes especially hard to read, because it is terrifying to think how children as young as Celia are forced to survive in terrible circumstances. I see it as a huge failure of our society that we cannot protect our most vulnerable, the children!

However, the character of Naomi remained a bit of an enigma for me in this latest instalment. I found her to be distracted and distant, and where I thought she should have bonded much more easily with Celia, she remained oddly aloof, intent solely on finding her sister. Whilst the mystery surrounding Naomi’s sister was something that revealed a little bit more about the girls’ terrible past (which was interesting), I found the premise a bit farfetched and lacking in the kind of tension the mystery in THE CHILD FINDER offered. Maybe I missed something, but some of the connections and decisions Naomi makes in the book did not totally make sense to me.

Summary:

All in all, I enjoyed Celia’s moving story in THE BUTTERFLY GIRL more than Naomi’s chapters, and hope that Naomi will go back to investigating cases of missing children in future books. I freely admit that I am not good at suspending disbelief, which is probably why this story did not totally hit the mark for me. However, I really enjoy Denfeld’s lyrical writing style and her keen observations of life on the streets, which she describes with a level of empathy and insight missing in many other novels with a similar subject matter. I look forward to reading more of this series in future.

Thank you to Edelweiss and Harper for the free electronic copy of this novel and for giving me the opportunity to provide an honest review.