This was a Kindle first for May, and most of the “firsts” are hit or miss. Some of them are fantastic, and I find a new author to follow. Some of them are terrible and I can’t wait to be done with them. Thankfully this book fell into the first category. I absolutely loved it. It’s been a while since I’ve read a book where I could call the story mostly original.
The only unoriginal part of this story is that there’s a bad guy who kidnaps girls and keeps them as sex slaves. That’s definitely not anything new. The truly innovative (and totally disturbing) twist is that he calls them his “butterflies” and tattoos giant wings that cover their backs. On the night that their tattoo is complete, he rapes each girl for the first time. The butterflies live in a special enclosed garden. The girls call him The Gardener. He “visits” whoever he likes nightly. He also only keeps them until they turn 21, and then they get killed and placed into see through cases with resin to keep them “fresh”. What makes it so disturbing (besides the whole murdery part) is that all of the butterflies that are still alive have to walk past the cases with the preserved dead girls every day.
The main character of this book is a girl called Inara / Maya. The whole story comes out while the police are questioning her about what happened in the Garden. We get bits and pieces of the story as she gets more comfortable with her police questioners. She really is a fascinating character, and she made me laugh many times. Although it takes a while (it wouldn’t be much of a book if it didn’t), I’d listen to Inara tell stories about anything. She weaves so many pieces together, and keeps you interested at every turn.