The Butterfly Box
May. 7th, 2023 02:28 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alobearI thought Santa Montefiore was going to be a long-term new addition to my reading shelf, but after really enjoying The Forget-Me-Not-Sonata and then having multiple issues with Lost Sea of Love, I'm afraid The Butterfly Box has made me decide it's not worth trying any more.
It had an interesting start - with the end of a relationship rather than the beginning - and there were a lot of characters I liked, the settings were wonderful and some of the layered storytelling did hold my interest. But there was also a great deal of very unhealthy female obsession with inappropriate, inadvisable and/or toxic men, most of the sexual power dynamics throughout were very dodgy, the protagonist showed some rather unpalatable attitudes (as well as being criminally shallow) and most of the sexual encounters made be very uncomfortable.
What I thought was going to be the main part of the story (from the blurb on the back) also didn't materialise until the last 50 pages or so, and even the last 200 felt very rushed in some ways.
So, rather disappointing overall.
It had an interesting start - with the end of a relationship rather than the beginning - and there were a lot of characters I liked, the settings were wonderful and some of the layered storytelling did hold my interest. But there was also a great deal of very unhealthy female obsession with inappropriate, inadvisable and/or toxic men, most of the sexual power dynamics throughout were very dodgy, the protagonist showed some rather unpalatable attitudes (as well as being criminally shallow) and most of the sexual encounters made be very uncomfortable.
What I thought was going to be the main part of the story (from the blurb on the back) also didn't materialise until the last 50 pages or so, and even the last 200 felt very rushed in some ways.
So, rather disappointing overall.
