Review of The Blue butterfly

[Wy_Bertram]

[Following is an official OnlineBookClub.org review of "The Blue butterfly" by Dixy Gandhi.]

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2 out of 4 stars

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The trauma of losing her biological mother at a young age scars Antra Jaisen permanently. With no outlet for her grief, Antra shuts herself off from the world, until Ryan, a schoolmate, begins the lifelong challenge of breaking down her walls. As they grow into adults, circumstances drive the pair apart time and again, only for them to find their way back to each other, until the decades-long game of push and pull comes to its climax. At the height of her career, Ryan appears back in Antra's life, and she must choose between the comfortable solitude she has created for herself or taking a chance on the one person who could make her feel whole again.

The Blue Butterfly is an emotional romance novel that focuses on loss, self-discovery and mental health. This book is written by Dixy Gandhi and illustrates the effects that trauma, and the poor treatment of it, could have on a person. In the beginning, this book read quite like a clichéd YA romance, with a misunderstood protagonist, and a seemingly aloof love interest that just seemed to get it. This relationship was even ritualised in an event called ‘The Reboot’, which turned out very differently from what I expected.

As I read on, however, The Blue Butterfly gradually shaped itself into a unique story. For one, I enjoyed how the author handled the mental health issues of the character, showing that a person's pain isn't always immediately obvious. On the flip side, however, this book was mostly just unrealistic. Granted, it is fiction, and YA fiction at that, a genre where things tend to get a bit crazy, but still, this book failed to register as plausible most of the time.

The most relevant instance of this would be the interactions between characters. It seemed they kept having the same conversations over and over again, and this repetitiveness of plot and dialogue made the reading go stale very quickly. There was a twist at the end which I enjoyed, but this only introduced a heap of plotholes into the earlier portions of the story. The pacing as well was a mess. The timeline jumped back and forth way too often, and I believe this book would have read a lot better with a linear timeline, or a reduced number of time skips.

Overall, I think this book has some potential but was poorly planned and truthfully, poorly written. The editing also left something to be desired as I found numerous errors. My rating of this book is thus, two out of four stars, the second star only because I somewhat enjoyed the storyline.

I recommend this to readers who enjoy a very slightly darker shade of romance, as illustrated by the title of this book. It hardly contains any adult material and should be suitable for most readers.

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The Blue butterfly
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[Ntokozo Joy Ndlovu]

It is rather disappointing that such a promising book did not deliver at the end. Thank you for the honesty in your review.

[Sopulu Ezidimma]

Which option would she go for i cant help but ask is it the comfortable solitude she has created for herself or taking a chance on the one person who could make her feel whole again. Great review.

[Amy Luman]

I was interested in this book from the beginning. I can somehow relate to it. I was, however, disappointed to hear that the novel did not deliver in the end. I hope the author will take your suggestions and hopefully she can turn it into something worth reading.