Once they turned 21, he killed them and preserved them.

He never kidnapped the girls younger than 16, and he only kept them until 21. His father collected and preserved butterflies when the Gardener was younger, but they were all destroyed in a fire however, the Gardener wanted to continue his hobby. Now, just as you think about how twisted things are here, it gets taken up another notch.Įvery girl got a tattoo of a butterfly as a part of the Gardener’s– the man who ran the garden– master plan. The Garden is a building with a long hallway of rooms and a relatively large room filled with a garden-like landscape. She takes all of the captives under her wing and gives them a piece of home throughout their stays. Lyonette was, even from her first introduction, my favorite character. They are given new names, a tattoo on their backs of a butterfly, and they are not allowed to leave. Lyonette gives Inara the run down on the place. The only thing that she is able to see is another girl, later identified as Lyonette. Her capturers were simply guests at the restaurant who were a tad creepy, but nothing gave away to the readers that they were involved in anything sketchy, but after her capture, she wakes up in an unfamiliar room with a metal table. This is where the Garden comes into play. The girls found out that Inara had no place of residency, and offered her a place to live. We find out here that Inara wasn’t her birth name, rather the identity that she assumed.Īt said restaurant, she met a group of girls who all lived together. She was living completely on her own and trying to find her place in the world at 15 years old, so hearing more about the struggle would have built Inara’s personality before her capturing a lot more.įrom what she narrated, we know that she had gotten a fake ID and had started working at a restaurant. I would have liked to hear more about her teenage years. She had a traumatizing childhood and faced serious neglect from her parents. Inara then starts from the beginning with her childhood and events leading up to this point.

As they gather more information on the girls, readers learn that Maya is actually Inara. Maya is one out of a few girls who were saved from this fire.

It added a comical relief to a frightening topic. I enjoyed reading Vic and Eddison bicker in between questions. The book starts with two FBI agents, Vic and Eddison, interviewing Maya, one of the girls who was saved from the burning building. While the title sounds seemingly innocent, the book surprises you with page turning twists that show the acts that the Gardener commits to his captives.

The Butterfly Garden written by Dot Hutchison follows the gut-wrenching story of a teen girl who is trapped in a man’s fantasy garden.

The butterfly garden book dot hutchison