The Butterfly Garden by Rachel Burton is an emotionally charged dualtime novel, set in 1963 and 2018. The story moves from the past to the present, and back, revealing secrets which have shaped lives of the main protagonists.
Blurb:
The Butterfly Garden
A gripping and beautiful tale of love, loss and secrets. Perfect for fans of Rachel Hore, Lorna Cook and Kathryn Hughes
1963: When Clara Samuels buys Butterfly Cottage, she knows the scandal she'll cause. A single woman buying property is not the "done thing", especially not in a village like Carybrook. But Clara has been in love with Butterfly Cottage, and its garden, since she used to play there before the War. And when she reconnects with her childhood friend James, her decision feels serendipitous. But the true scandal is yet to come, because withing six months, Clara will leave England under mysterious circumstances, and Butterfly Cottage will stand empty for more than 50 years.
2018: No one is more suprised than Meredith when she's bequeathed a cottage by a great aunt she'd never heard of. She hopes, briefly, that the inheritance could be the answer to her financial problems. But when she arrives in Suffolk, she is shocked to discover a man is already living there. A young gardener, who claims he was also bequeathed half of Butterfly Cottage.
As the pair try to unravel their complicated situation, they unearth a decades old mystery involving Clara, the garden, and a stack of letters left unread for over 50 years...
As a young child, Clara Samuels used to love visiting her friend James at Butterfly Cottage where the Mackenzies resided. His father was the vicar of Carybrook, and "the house he lived in and the garden his mother tended so lovingly belonged to the diocese".
Clara feels unloved by her strict parents and sister Esther, who do not approve of sunburn or stains, or spending long summer days roaming the country lanes around the village.
"I wish I could stay here forever", she said. "It always feels more like home in the Butterfly Garden". The cottage and the Mackenzie family have been a refuge for the lonely girl.
When the war begins, James's parents move away, and part of Clara's heart is lost.
We meet Clara again, when she's teaching in London in 1963. A phone call from her older sister Esther will change the course of her life forever. Esther tells her that the cottage of her childhood dreams is for sale. Clara decides to move back to Carybrook, and buy the Butterfly Cottage.
The parochial narrow-minded world of the village sets tongues wagging. A single woman buying a house is borderline scandalous.
And then Clara's old flame, James, is coming back into her life. James works as a gardener in a manor house nearby. He seems to be as smitten with Clara as she is with him. The future is seemingly full of hope, but within a year, Clara will be leaving England for good.
Meredith Carling discovers she had a great aunt who she had never known anything about, and not only that, the mystery aunt had left her a house in Suffolk. The property has been empty for many years.
Her mother Bernice is living her dream in Alicante with her husband Lloyd, Meredith's step-father. Her own father has been an almost non-existent figure in her life. Dennis might have a clue about the aunt, but he left without a trace on her 18th birthday, and nobody knows where he lives now.
To complicate the matters even further, half of the house has been bequeathed to another person, who is now living in a caravan in the garden. Zach is a garderner who has undertaken an ambitious project of restoring the cottage garden to its former glory.
Together with Zach, Meredith is looking for any clues in the house, and asking questions around the village, trying to solve the mystery of its previous owner.
"...when somebody you didn't know existed left you half a house in very odd circumstances, it was impossible not to want to know why".
What is the mystery behind the Butterfly Cottage? Will Meredith and Zach find the answers?
The Butterfly Garden is both lyrical and unadorned, rich with truth about disfunctional families.
A few things that made me wonder about the plot:
Why is the Reverend's family seen as undesirable by Clara's family?
Isn't vicar considered to be a gentlemanly profession? As far as I understand the social class structure in this country, the vicar's status is pretty high above the "hoi polloi". So, if anything, her parents should have been flattered that their child is allowed to spend a lot of time with the vicar's family.
(For example, James thinks, "It made him feel dizzy and claustrophobic and he knew that people looked down on him, in the same way that some of his father's parishioners had looked down on the Reverend Mackenzie when Butterfly Cottage was the vicarage".)
The Butterfly Garden is a thought-provoking story, that makes you ponder on the fallacies of the human beings, and the power of redemption. The main characters in the novel are realistically flawed, and through exploring their weaknesses as well as strengths the author introduces several important themes.
I didn't quite warm to any of the main characters. If anything, they left me frustrated at their inability to be more assertive.
Meredith keeps moaning about her life, and blames her ex for everything. Yes, he is a cheating piece of work, but nobody forced her to buy the salon, or pushed her deeper into debts. Surely as a grown-up woman, she should accept the fact that she is responsible for her own actions and ultimately failures.
Zach is rather nondescript. His presence in the story is almost an afterthought, and doesn't feel integral to the plotline.
James has no spine whatsoever. He chooses a path of surrender, and though he regrets it later, his weakness doesn't portray him favourably.
And Esther and Richard are an unpleasant pair with a nasty streak, who want to control Clara.
Clara is the most interesting protagonist, and I would have liked to know more about her life in Australia. She is resilient, and believes she made the choice which has "opened up opportunities... that would never have come otherwise."
The Butterfly Garden is a heart-wrenching and uplifting story, a compassionate exploration of the themes of love and grief, secrets and lies.
This review is part of the blog tour for The Butterfly Garden.
Many thanks to Rachel Burton, Boldwood Books and Rachel's Random Resources for my e-copy of the book!
Purchase Link - https://mybook.to/ButterflyGardenSocial
Author Bio –
Rachel Burton is the bestselling author of historical timeslip novels and
has previously written romantic comedies.
Rachel was born in
Cambridge and grew up in a house full of books and records. She has read
obsessively since she first realised those black squiggles on the pages that
lined her parents’ bookshelves were actually words and it has gone down in
family history that any time something interesting happened, she missed it
because she had her nose in a book.
After reading for a degree
in Classics and another in English Literature she accidentally fell into a
career in law but her love of books prevailed as she realised that she wanted
to slip into imaginary worlds of her own making. She eventually managed to
write her first novel on her lunch breaks.
She is obsessed with old
houses and the secrets they keep, with abandoned gardens and locked gates, with
family histories and surprising revelations, and with the outcomes of those
surprises many generations later.
She lives in Yorkshire with
her husband, a variety of cats and far too many books. By writing novels she
now has an excuse for her head being forever in the clouds.
Social Media Links –
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