Butterfly Tattoo by Deidre Knight

Carolyn:

I finally got to read this book - at last! I'd heard so much about it and the excerpt I'd read made me eager for more.

Michael Warner is bisexual. He was partnered for 13 years with with Alex (Al), a pediatrician, surfer, and a guy almost too good to be true. They even start a family and have a daughter, Andrea.

Al is killed by a drunk driver while Andrea is in the car. Andrea is very emotionally scarred by this and Michael has been numb for a year.

Then he meets Rebecca and each of them have an immediate attraction to the other.

I was halfway through the book before I realized it was written first person, present tense.

"Holy shit!" I said silently. Wow, does that ever work with this book. At least, it did for me.

How else could you achieve the immediacy? How else could you know what both protagonists were thinking?

I admit, there were times toward the end when I wanted to slap Rebecca and tell her to GET ON WITH IT!

But consider: we readers know all of Michael's hangups and emotions and just how sincerely in love he really is, because we're right inside his head. At the same time, we can see his reluctance to completely let Al go and he makes some stupid mistakes.

Rebecca doesn't have our advantage and has to learn the big T word - TRUST.

She has her own hangups, as does Andrea and how they all overcome their weaknesses - their mental scars and physical scars - and grow as people, makes this a beautiful, emotional love story.

Oh hell, I can't say it right. But I can say that this book deserves all the hype it got.

A real keeper and if I were grading, it would be a definite A.



Lori:


I finished it last night. It did something no book has done in ages: it made me cry. And I cried numerous times while reading it.

Unlike Carolyn, I felt a greater connection to Rebecca. Her story was that she had been an actress on a successful television show and was attacked by a stalker. She was stabbed and left for dead. Her best friend found her and she was saved in the nick of time but the scars inside and outside are always there.

Needless to say, trust would be a very big deal for Rebecca.

There were things that Ms. Knight did that worked crazy great. The entire book was in first person present with chapter alternating between Michael and Rebecca. It made everything more immediate and I found myself sometimes wishing that I could hear what the other person was thinking as well, a sign of my involvement in the story. I was pulled in and caring so deeply what their experiences were.

But more than anything this book was written by a woman who loves writing and writes for the love of words. I was awash with the poetry of her words, with the great canvas she painted using her words as bright and bold colors and evoking landscapes in places, people's histories and emotions. Los Angeles, movie studios, twins and little girl's broken hearts were painted and not just told.

This book was almost perfect. It deserves it's accolades and deserves a wide, wide audience reading it.