Hutchison has created a slew of characters for The Butterfly Garden each with their own unique personality and identity and even though a lot of them are secondary characters, Hutchison has done an excellent job at not confusing the reader and constantly has the narrator throw in little things to help the reader remember who a character may be. The reader learns about her troubled past and how she has been on her own, fending for herself for as long as she can remember. At times throughout The Butterfly Garden, the language used for Inara/Maya’s character almost seems unlikely for an eighteen year old. When Inara is recounting what has happened at the Garden, the story is told from her voice. Hutchison does an excellent job at breaking up the story so that the reader is aware of who is narrating throughout the story. The story bounces between the Garden where she is referred to as Maya and the interview room where the FBI try to piece together what has happened at the Garden where she is referred to as Inara. Maya eventually reveals that her name is Inara and the names interchange throughout the story. At first, she tells them that her name is Maya and that the man who held her and multiple other girls captive, the Gardner, gave her that name. The main characters in The Butterfly Garden are the FBI agents Vic and Eddison, and a girl who survived all of the cruel and vile things that happened at the Garden. The Butterfly Garden and The Collector Series are not for the faint of heart as Hutchison has created an absolutely haunting story that is both breathtaking and horrifying. The Butterfly Garden falls under the genres of both a thriller and a police procedural as Hutchison weaves the story through Inara’s words now in a police interview room and as she reminisces on her past, including being held as a prisoner at the Garden. The Butterfly Garden by Dot Hutchison was released in April 2016 and it is the first novel in The Collector Series which follows the same three FBI agents (Eddison, Vic, and Ramirez) throughout the novels.

The collector series dot hutchison