The Black Butterfly Review

This week's novel is The Black Butterfly by Shirley Reva Vernick.

When Penny's flaky mom runs off to spend Christmas trying to photograph ghosts in Idaho, Penny is shipped off to an inn belonging to her mom's estranged friend on a tiny island off the coast of Maine.  There she makes friends with Rita, the chef, falls for George, the inn keeper's son, and meets two honest to goodness ghosts, one of whom wants to kill her.  She ends up uncovering not just the ghosts' past, but also her own.

This book was silly.  I read it in about three hours, which was nice and which gives it a lot of leeway in the silly department, because it's not like it stole any of my time.

The best parts of this book are the descriptions of food and cooking.  It was tremendous and I loved it and I wish this was just Penny and Rita and George cooking, because I would have read the hell out of that.  I would have read that twice.

I also really liked that when George decided to be charming, he really was suave.  The kissing is very good here and George is super cute.  But this begs the question of why he was a jerk at the beginning (which he was), which is answered with a flippant "he has migraines sometimes," which is such a weird explanation (I know migraines and that didn't look like a migraine) that I assumed it would turn out to be an excuse covering up something darker.  But no.  It's never mentioned again.

A lot of the book was like that.  I was expecting things to come back and mean something or to pay off.  I expected everyone of hiding things and trying to manipulate Penny.  But no.  Like, I was sure Nice Ghost was trying to kill Penny and had killed the random handy man that shows up once.  I was sure Rita was going to be evil in a big twist at the end where she'd give Penny a speech about how she had been hoping that she wouldn't have to poison her, but Penny just kept snooping.  I was sure the crawl space was super haunted and maybe where Bad Ghost lived and the climax would take place there.  I was sure the family knew there were ghosts and they were trying to cover it up.  I was sure George's migraines (if they existed) were from brain damage from when Bad Ghost threw him down the stairs in the crawl space.

I was continuously searching for layers and trying to make it more complicated.  Maybe this was me being too wound up.  Maybe it was that the characters' actions only made sense to me if there was something else going on.

I thought everything would be tied up at the end, but I'm left with a lot of questions.  Why does George like her if she's distant and self-conscious and awkward until after they make out?  Why is Rita making huge, elaborate meals when it's the off season and the inn has no guests and the family doesn't seem to eat?  How does Nice Ghost know "shaman stuff"?  What is Bad Ghost's goal here?  Why, when Penny's hypothermic, do they solve that by putting her in the hot tub, and why does she not die of shock?  Shhhhhhhhh!  Shut up, Carolyn.

Anyway.  It was silly and enjoyable.  And I didn't really put it down.

***

Next week: Strange the Dreamer by Lani Taylor.