Title: THE GLASS BUTTERFLY (Haunted Hearts Legacy #3)
Author: A.G. Howard
Pub. Date: August 15, 2018
Publisher: Golden Orb Press
Formats: Paperback, eBook
Pages: 278
All other formats and vendors will be available on the official launch date: August 15, 2018
For close to a decade, twenty-five-year-old Felicity Lonsdale has masqueraded as a dowager almost twice her age—selling caterpillars to butterfly consortiums—enabling her to hide an ill-fated past while raising her late brother’s daughters. Together, the three live on an isolated Irish estate bequeathed by a dying earl. When the earl’s estranged son arrives to claim his inheritance by threatening to expose Felicity’s true identity, she longs to pack up her nieces and run. But a ghostly secret within the castle’s turret holds her captive.
Nick Thornton—a Roma viscount’s heir—is also captive. After a tryst with an investor’s wife nearly destroyed his family’s holiday resort, Nick forsook everything to elope with her. However, a tragic mistake at his hand led to her and his baby’s deaths. Refusing to turn to the family he shamed, Nick travels to seek the countess who once co-wrote a romance with his sister. There’s rumor of a special butterfly in her keep—a transparent-winged species with ties to the afterlife. Nick hopes to contact his dead wife and child, for only their forgiveness can free him.
Upon his arrival to Felicity’s estate, Nick offers to help her defeat the earl’s son, on the condition she allow Nick to investigate her glass butterflies. Felicity agrees, though fears the closer he gets to the ghosts of his past, the closer he’ll come to uncovering her own. As Nick spends time with Felicity and her nieces, he realizes the mystery enshrouding this fragile countess and her castle is more intriguing than the ghosts he originally came to find. And perhaps putting his dead to rest and helping her do the same will be his true path to redemption.
My review:Rating: A-
My thoughts on the book:
When I saw that The Glass Butterfly was a book by A.G. Howard, I jumped at the chance to review it. Howard is a fantastic author, and I love her Splintered series. When I requested this book for review, I wasn't aware it was the third in a series. It read as a standalone, so I actually didn't know it was a part of a series until I started working on this review. I want to read the other two books, now that I know that there are more novels in this series, and I'm confident that they will read like standalone novels as well.
This novel was very different from Howard's Splintered series in most ways, but one thing was very similar. The obsession with butterflies throughout the book reminded me of Splintered and Alyssa's hangup with bugs. However, that is where the similarities end. The main characters in this novel are adults, and they have very different goals and personalities than anyone in the Splintered series. The story and world are extremely well-developed, especially with this being the third book in the series. I didn't feel lost at all. The plot was extremely intriguing and kept me reading into the early morning.
The two main characters, Nick and Felicity, are well-developed and extremely complex. I love how their stories unraveled throughout the narrative instead of just having one major info dump at the beginning. Their secrets were slowly revealed to each other and to the reader, and that seemed much more organic. Neither character is perfect, and while they have a past connection, neither character has a "good" past. They are both broken in many ways, and I really appreciated that about them. The secondary characters were also well-developed, and I really loved Felicity's two nieces.
The writing for this book was beautiful, of course. I've come to expect nothing less from Howard. The world-building was fantastic, and the descriptions were wonderful. The pacing of the story was perfect, and there was enough mystery to keep me guessing throughout the entire novel. The characters' growth throughout the book was also really great to watch. The romance between Nick and Felicity is natural and progresses at a normal speed. They have a great chemistry. My only problem with this book is that it felt like Howard was trying to use Jane Austen's free indirect discourse, where the third person limited narrator skips between characters to allow for a range of thoughts to be shown to the reader, but it didn't work out. There was no separation between Felicity and Nick, as far as narrative voice went, and it got confusing from time to time. I couldn't figure out whose thoughts I was privy to, which pulled me out of the story. Aside from that, the book was amazing, and the ending was lovely.
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