Book Review: The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison

Title: The Butterfly Clues

Author: Kate Ellison

Genre: Contemporary, Mystery/Thriller, Young Adult

Publisher: EgmontUSA
Publication Date: February 2012
Hardcover: 336 pages

Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad’s consulting job means she’s grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she’s learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place–possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.

But in the year since her brother Oren’s death, Lo’s hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as “Sapphire”–a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can’t get the murder out of her mind.

As she attempts to piece together the mysterious “butterfly clues,” with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined–a world, she’ll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother’s tragic death.

Stand alone or series: Stand alone novel

How did I get this book: ARC from PaperLanternLit

Why did I read this book: I was intrigued by the title, the cover, and, most recently, the excellent book trailer. Though neither contemporary YA nor mystery/thrillers are in my sweet spot, there was something about this book that made me stop and want to pick it up.

Review:

Tap, tap, tap. Banana.

Penelope Marin (Pe-ne-lo-pe Ma-rin, 6 syllables, 6 is a good number), is a seventeen year old high school junior, a daughter, a sister, and afflicted with obsessive compulsive disorder. Since her brother Oren’s death a year earlier, Lo’s compulsions and rituals have increased in intensity – she has to tap three times and say banana before entering or leaving a room; she repeats things in multiples of three, six, or nine; she steals and hoards objects that call out to her. When she stumbles across a blue butterfly pendant necklace, she knows she must have it for her own, only to learn that it belonged to a young woman named Sapphire – a stripper recently killed in “Neverland”, the crime-ridden inner city part of Cleveland. Lo feels a connection to Sapphire, and dives relentlessly into the mystery of her murder. Lo’s quest for answers draws her into the darkest reaches of Neverland, to dumpsters, abandoned buildings, heroin dens, and strip clubs. With the help of the enigmatic, secretive artist Flynt, Lo discovers what fate befell Sapphire – and how the murdered girl’s story ties into Lo’s, and her brother Oren’s, own.

The debut novel from Kate Ellison, The Butterfly Clues is an incisive, unflinching novel that is often painful to read, but brilliant because of it. Narrated in the first person by Penelope, the novel delves into the mind of a girl driven and trapped by her compulsions – numbers, objects, and rituals. Penelope is a heroine unlike any other that I’ve ever read, and seeing first-hand her extreme compulsions and her inability to stop even though she wants to – even when her very life is in danger in one pivotal scene, Lo cannot stop herself from her patters and rituals, and this is a terrifying, powerful thing to read. Ms. Ellison’s portrayal of Lo’s severe OCD rings as wholly genuine and deals with the implications of the anxiety disorder in a way that is both believable and non-exploitative. I felt physically and emotionally pained at points in this book because of Lo’s disorder and the shame she feels, her huge self-doubts, her shattered family life (what with her drugged-out mother and never present father), and her enslavement to her myriad rituals. I felt deeply for Penelope, and the fact that I was so frustrated at times during The Butterfly Clues speaks to the powerful character and realism with which Ms. Ellison writes. Beyond her OCD, Lo is a character with vibrant thoughts and feelings and an almost poetic point of view; she’s tenacious and brave in the face of fear, and refreshingly unafraid to ask for help.

Lo’s counterpart in The Butterfly Clues is Flynt; a runaway, street artist, with his own shadowed past. I liked Flynt’s devil-may-care alternative to the typical high school hero (heck, he’s not even in school because of his past). As a pair, Lo and Flynt are a strong, complimentary duo that play on the fringes of the familiar YA space, and I liked that Ms. Ellison is not afraid to push the envelope. There are no value judgements assigned through Lo’s eyes – not to those who are homeless, not to those that have dropped out of school, not toward strippers, and not to those who live in Neverland.

As a pure mystery, The Butterfly Clues is less compelling – the overall mystery of Sapphire, her Bird, and her death are fairly obvious, though the plot is tightly written. The only thing that truly bothered me about the novel, however, was how complacent Lo’s parents, particularly her father, and Flynt are to her compulsions at the end of the novel. Yes, there is no be all cure for obsessive compulsive disorder, but the novel ends on a strange note where it doesn’t seem like Lo will be receiving any kind of further treatment, and this is hugely problematic because Lo’s condition is incredibly severe. That said, I did like that there are no happy ever after simple solutions to the story. There’s a resolution and happiness of sorts, but clearly Penelope, Flynt, and her family have their scars, burdens, and future battles to fight. But, with any luck, they’ll have each other to get through them.

Overall, I found The Butterfly Clues to be a painful, powerful novel and one that I wholeheartedly recommend.

Tap, tap, tap. Banana.

Additional Thoughts: Check out the book trailer below:

Also, we are currently giving away a copy of The Butterfly Clues – the contest is open until TONIGHT at 11:59pm EST! If you haven’t entered yet, get on it!

Rating: 7 – Very Good

Reading Next: The Dead of Winter by Chris Priestley

Buy the Book:

Ebook available for kindle US, nook & apple