Book Tour Review: The Butterfly Sister by Amy Gail Hansen

Monday, August 19, 2013
Title: The Butterfly Sister
Author: Amy Gail Hansen
Genre: general fiction
Series: N/A
Pages: 320
Published: August 6 2013
Source: TLC Book Tours for review
Rating: 3/5


"My past was never more than one thought, one breath, one heartbeat away. And then, on that particular October evening, it literally arrived at my doorstep."

Eight months after dropping out of Tarble, an all-women's college, twenty-two-year-old Ruby Rousseau is still haunted by the memories of her senior year-a year marred by an affair with her English professor and a deep depression that not only caused her to question her own sanity but prompted a failed suicide attempt.

And then a mysterious paisley print suitcase arrives, bearing Ruby's name and address on the tag. When Ruby tries to return the luggage to its rightful owner, Beth Richards, her dorm mate at Tarble, she learns that Beth disappeared two days earlier, and the suitcase is the only tangible evidence as to her whereabouts.

Consumed by the mystery of the missing girl and the contents of the luggage-a tattered copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own, the book on which Ruby based her senior thesis, and which she believes instigated her madness-she sets out to uncover the truth, not only about Beth Richards's past but also her own. In doing so, Ruby is forced to reexamine the people from her past: the professor who whisked her away to New Orleans and then shattered her heart and the ghosts of dead women writers who beckoned her to join their illustrious group. And when Ruby's storyline converges with Beth's in a way she never imagined, she returns to the one place she swore she never would: her alma mater.

I liked this quite a bit. I didn't love it, but Amy Gail Hansen pulled me into her story easily and early. The mystery is intriguing, the characters are well-drawn, and the writing itself is sold. Part mystery, part thriller, the author blends together the various aspects of The Butterfly Sister into an interesting and compulsively readable novel. Fast-paced, with several, unexpected twists and turns, readers will find themselves drawn into Ruby Rousseau's complicated life. This is a short-ish novel, but Hansen packs a lot of punch into her three-hundred pages.

Ruby is a compelling protagonist - she's complicated, a mess, a shadow of her former self. She also believes herself to be mad, and with an attempted suicide in her recent past, it's easy to believe in her confusion and pain. Though the majority of the story is focused on the "now" timeline, there are frequent flashbacks interspersed to a year before, when Ruby was at college, and in a seemingly-better mental state. Both the past and the present narratives are connected in unexpected ways, and as Ruby tries to find Beth and figure out what happened to her a year ago, she comes to realize that life at Tarble was not exactly as she remembered. Her romance with an older man is nicely written and fraught with drama, if a bit squick-imducing when it's revealed her love is only three years younger than Ruby's own parents.

The disappearance of Beth is key to the plot, and as Ruby uncovers more about her former friend, the similarities between the two women become more and more apparent. Both were only children, both lost their fathers, and both made ill-fated romantic relationships. But while Ruby may be metaphorically lost, Beth is literally lost. The theme of feminine depression encompasses both women's lives in surprising ways -- Ruby herself is depressed, and while Beth remains unafflicted, another woman's depression has dire implications for her own life. Hansen handles the theme well, and without prejudice. Her even-handed depiction of depression is forthright and real, and never veers into political incorrectness. It helps that Ruby is shown to be a very smart woman, and a thorough researcher. She is much more than her illness, and it doesn't define her.

The final chapters of the book were weaker than the introduction. The mystery flags as the culprit is revealed and leads the characters on an increasingly hard-to-believe series of events. As it went on, The Butterfly Sister lost a bit of the subtlety that it had maintained earlier in the story, but I still couldn't put the book down. It wasn't perfect, but Hansen's first novel is an easy read that will definitely keep readers turning the page. It's unusual, compelling, and a bit weird -- and absolutely memorable.




Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me in this tour! Find the full schedule here.

5 comments:

  1. Jessie, visiting your blog is like visiting temptation. You make me want to read ALL THE BOOKS. Erm, anyway!!

    Ruby sounds like a wonderful protagonist to follow. I'm probably one of the few people who actually really like flashbacks and multiple timelines, so what you said about past and present narratives (especially with one in college :D) already intrigues me. Especially with how it sounds like Ruby starts off the novel as....

    "if a bit squick-imducing when it's revealed her love is only three years younger than Ruby's own parents." <-- Definitely squick inducing. It's nice that the romance well developed but... blergh.

    "Her even-handed depiction of depression is forthright and real, and never veers into political incorrectness...She is much more than her illness, and it doesn't define her." <-- That's good to know, because when I first read "feminine depression," I did squirm a little, wondering this would further the stigma.

    "As it went on, The Butterfly Sister lost a bit of the subtlety that it had maintained earlier in the story, but I still couldn't put the book down." <-- Funny thing. Even if the ending loses its stream and isn't as well done as the intro., I'll often still like the book more than if the latter were true. Can't get past a terrible intro, but a terrible ending? You've always got your own imagination and fanfiction to get you through lol.

    Another reason I love visiting your blog? Because it seems like you're always featuring titles I haven't heard of yet, but sound so wonderful :).

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  2. I passed on this because I'm so sick of books about a woman's college experience being made up of only an affair with her professor. It makes me bonkers! College can make a person mad in lots of other ways.

    That rant aside, this sounds kind of interesting. Not sure if it's interesting enough to put on the TBR though...

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  3. I really don't read enough books that grab me from the beginning. I don't even fault the authors for this, as there's always set up that needs to happen. But I really love books that DO grab me from the beginning. With my limited reading time, I appreciate the hook!

    Thanks for being on the tour!

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  4. Beautiful blog...new e-mail follower.

    FANTASTIC review...thanks for sharing. I am looking forward to reading this book. The cover is FAB!!

    Enjoy your week.

    Elizabeth
    Silver's Reviews
    My Blog

    ReplyDelete

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