4.5 stars 
 Disclaimer: I received a free copy of The Butterfly Garden through netgalley in return for an honest review. 
 "Some people stay broken. Some pick up the pieces and put them back together with all the sharp edges showing." 
 I got this off netgalley a few weeks ago and added it to my far-too-long list of 'books to read next'. I didn't get round to actually reading it until a few days ago, at 3 o'clock in the morning when I couldn't sleep. I knew the basic gist of what The Butterfly Garden was about but didn't know enough to know that reading it in the middle of the night was a very, very bad idea. It is graphic and disturbing and written well enough to really freak me out (it had nothing to do with an irrational fear of the dark...I'm a grown woman, dammit). 
 The Butterfly Garden follows a pair of police detective people (whatever they're called) as they question a girl known initially only as Maya - the name given to her by the man who has kept her captive for the past 2 years, tattooing her and keeping her in a lavish garden with his other 'butterflies'. It's actually more messed up than it sounds and it's certainly something I've never seen anything like this before and I have to applaud Dot Hutchison for doing something original and for doing it really pretty well. 
 The events of the book technically take place over only a few days but, during this time, Maya recounts much of her life, including her years in captivity. I generally find books with a large emphasis on police investigation pretty boring but it worked very well and I think it was a good way of telling it, although I wasn't so keen on the 'present day' bits with the policeman actually in it, but Maya's story does make up most of the book so this wasn't really as issue. In this way, Hutchison also took the stance of telling the ending it the beginning in a way - as we know the whole way through that the girls escape. The whole story of Maya's life and captivity is not told in order but this didn't bother me - I was absorbed enough by the story to not need that constant wanting to find out what happens next. It's a risky way to write a book but, in this case, it works very well. 
 One thing I felt a little unsure about was my emotional reaction - although I was clearly horrified, upset and even frightened, by Maya's story, there was never a time where I found it really distressing - it never made me cry, where I felt the concept gave an opportunity for this. I think this is mainly a nonissue though, as Hutchison wasn't trying to invoke that sort of reaction and, in that sense, she hasn't failed. Maya's character is straightforward and has a strength about her, she is not an emotional person herself and, although the way she tells her story is not without at all without emotion, she is not the sort to want to be pitied and that is how she tells her story. 
 I think Maya was very well-written. Although she is completely unlike anyone I've ever known, she is completely believable. She is likeable and yet she has faults but she doesn't feel like a list of character traits - she feels like a person. She is written with complexities and I think that's perhaps the best thing about the whole book. 
 The only thing I have a real issue with is a little something at the end - I won't say what so as to avoid spoilers but there's a small added element to the plot that I feel adds nothing and only cheapens it. I think the whole book would have been better if that bit had just been left out and the whole book were a page or two shorter.