The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld (Naomi Cottle #2)

Hello beautiful people! Welcome to a new review! For this review, I get into The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld a mystery thriller and the second book in the two-book Naomi Cottle series. I really enjoyed the first book The Child Finder and given the cliffhanger that was left in the first book I was excited to get into this one. So, let’s get into it!

Main Characters:

• Naomi Cottle: After the loss of her foster mother, and the reconnection with her foster brother Jerome in the first book Naomi decides it is finally time to stop running from her past, looking for her sister Naomi finds clues to her past, and a trail of young girls that may take her there
• Jerome Cottle: Once Naomi’s foster brother, now her husband (I know I was kinda new about this too but they aren’t blood at all so I can’t judge) goes on a journey with her to help her find her past and her sister, finds that it may take him into a journey into his own history as well
• Celia: A young girl living on the streets in the area where Naomi is looking for her sister, has a rough life but is lucky to be protected by her friends Rich and Stoner on the streets while young girls just like her are going missing in large numbers, makes a connection with Naomi when they meet

My Review

As mentioned before The Butterfly Girl by Rene Denfeld is the second book in a two-book series. I mentioned that I wanted to read this book because of a cliffhanger that was left in the first book. The cliffhanger that throughout the first book The Child Finder Naomi was often hiding from her past and the fact that she had a missing sister somewhere out there. She was very aware that this part of her history made her good at finding lost children because she had once lost herself, but that doesn’t mean that she thought about the past a lot. At the end of the first book, she sparked an interest in finding her missing sister, the one she hadn’t seen since her sister was 2, insinuating that this is what she would do in the next book. Given what Naomi’s past was I was super interested in her finding her sister so I was ready to get into this book.

Given all I just said about the first book, I don’t really feel like you need to read the first book to read this one. The first book definitely leads into this one, but nothing that really happens in the first is relevant to this one because her sister only came up at the end, she was looking for this completely different kidnapped little girl the whole book. In this book, she’s really only investigating her sister’s disappearance. Overall I gave The Butterfly Girl an 8.5/10 rating.

While the book does majorly follow Naomi looking for her sister we also get this other perspective throughout the book from this young girl named Celia who lives in the same area that Naomi is looking for her sister in. While it eventually does all connect I was a bit confused about why we were getting so much backstory on this random girl who just seemed to be running into Naomi a lot because she was living on the street. I mean I get why this is in here, it’s because maybe Rene didn’t feel like she had enough to just focus on Naomi and the sister and needed to add something else in there to expand the book. I personally was not angry about it because I found Celia, her current story, and her back story to be incredibly interesting. I honestly didn’t even really care that it seemed so different from everything else going on it was just so interesting that I was just enjoying it just as much as Naomi’s parts. Like I said it all does come together but it takes a while to get there for sure.

When Naomi was a child she and her sister were kept in captivity. In an attempt to escape one night she and her sister ran but her sister being so little got hurt and Naomi had to leave her. Found by a group of migrant workers working in the local strawberry fields they took her to the next town over where she was placed into a foster home with her foster mother Ms. Cottle. All Naomi knew was her name and nothing else so they were never able to find her past or where she came from, and no one ever claimed her. If I remember correctly it wasn’t exactly that Naomi just abandoned her sister but that her mind due to the trauma blocked her out. There was never really going to be much that Naomi could do to help her since she was so young herself so her mind just made her forget her sister and what happened to them. It wasn’t until the case she took in The Child Finder started to give her memories of her past and what may have happened to her. With these new memories, she decided to go look into what her mind was hiding from her all this time.

As I had said before I really enjoyed having Celia be the other main character in the book. A young teen living on the streets Celia is hardened to all that life can be at a very young age. It’s even worse that girls such as herself who are vulnerable are going missing and being found in numbers that would make anyone uncomfortable. While there are parts that she is painfully naive (which is completely fair given her age) there are others where she is incredibly smart, kind, and compassionate. The reason that she is living on the street in the first place has heavily to do with the fact that she threw herself under the bus in an attempt to protect her younger sister. She’s a character you can’t help but love and root for the whole time, and while it is painful to see her go through the things she does there are parts where we get to celebrate with her too. I appreciated that with Rene using the story of a teen living on the streets she was woefully accurate with her descriptions, but also respectful at the same time. She didn’t lie about or romanticize the life that Celia and her friends were living and didn’t shy away from making it clear the awful things these kids would need to do to survive.

I was pretty sure in the first book that Naomi and Jerome would be in a relationship in this book I just didn’t expect them to be married. It isn’t a bad thing at all I was just surprised considering how non-committal Naomi was in the first book. It was nice for Naomi to have someone in this book though. In the first book, she was often alone and in this one, she had someone to come home to and someone who she could bounce things off of. I felt like this didn’t tone down Naomi’s intensity though which isn’t exactly a good thing. Don’t get me wrong I enjoy Naomi as a character but she’s very intense with everything she does and this sometimes makes her have a one-track mind. Throughout the book it just annoyed me how she is the child finder, this child is suffering right in front of her, and she’s so distracted by finding her sister that she’s giving her no mind. Not that I think she could have ‘saved’ Celia or anything but it just made me roll my eyes sometimes on how she would ignore an issue going on in front of her instead of one she finds more important in the moment. I am also not blaming Naomi for desperately wanting to find her sister but it just seemed odd to me given her whole thing was helping kids. Eventually, she comes to her senses, but it just took a bit longer than it should have.

Overall a really good read that brings you in with the mystery of what happened to Naomi’s sister, but keeps you around for the thrill of what’s going to happen, and how things with progress with Celia. As I said before you don’t have to have read the first book to check this one out so if this seems interesting to you and you haven’t read the first don’t worry about it just jump into it.

*** Don’t go any further if you don’t want to see any spoilers ***

Happily, Naomi finds her sister alive. I totally thought she was dead but their captor kept her alive out of spite for Naomi escaping him all those years ago.

Her sister’s name is Sarah, and Naomi finds this out when she finds that she and her sister were kidnapped from a local orphanage. Nothing ever came of their capture because they were kidnapped by the son of the local mayor, who had passed on this particular trait to his own son through his teachings. Yeah, yuck right. This like his father preferred killing over keeping and while having Sarah continued to kill other young girls while she got older in his home. The man as we can all suspect takes Celia and that is when Naomi really ‘notices’ her for the first time. Naomi saves her and this of course also reunites her with Sarah.

It was a sweet ending and one I was happy for. Celia was brought into Naomi and Jerome’s home as their foster child, her sister stayed with another family but the two saw each other often. It took a while for Sarah to adjust because she spent 18 years in captivity but Naomi was taking the time to show her things.

I hope you enjoyed this review! Feel free to follow me on my socials @baddiebookreviews to be kept up to date for when I release a new review!