The Butterfly Clues

location: home

mood:  sleepy

watching: Scarecrow and Mrs. King Season 1 ( mom has me hooked now!)

music: none

The Butterfly Clues by Kate Ellison

Release Date:  Febuary 14,2012

Publisher: Egmont

Age Group: Young Adult

Pages: 336

Format: eARC
Source: NetGalley
Intrest: Young Adult
Challenge: 2011 Reading Challenge, Debut Author Challenge, Stand Alone Challenge
Buy the Book: Amazon

Penelope (Lo) Marin has always loved to collect beautiful things. Her dad's consulting job means she's grown up moving from one rundown city to the next, and she's learned to cope by collecting (sometimes even stealing) quirky trinkets and souvenirs in each new place--possessions that allow her to feel at least some semblance of home.

But in the year since her brother Oren's death, Lo's hoarding has blossomed into a full-blown, potentially dangerous obsession. She discovers a beautiful, antique butterfly pendant during a routine scour at a weekend flea market, and recognizes it as having been stolen from the home of a recently murdered girl known only as "Sapphire"--a girl just a few years older than Lo. As usual when Lo begins to obsess over something, she can't get the murder out of her mind.

As she attempts to piece together the mysterious "butterfly clues," with the unlikely help of a street artist named Flynt, Lo quickly finds herself caught up in a seedy, violent underworld much closer to home than she ever imagined--a world, she'll ultimately discover, that could hold the key to her brother's tragic death.

I love a good murder mystery! For some reason in the YA genre this is something that is very much lacking. If you like paranormal, witches, vampires, and the like then you'll be entertained for years to come. Some of the very first books I ever read, that totally got me hooked on reading, were mysteries. So needless to say, I was thrilled about this book!

Kate Ellison delivered a stunning and intricately woven debut novel that had me biting my nails, gritting my teeth, and anxious to turn the page and find out what was going to happen next! She so cleverly wove together murder, mystery, suspense, family drama, the loss of life, and mental disorders. I was completely hooked from the first page!

I love how The Butterfly Clues isn't just your standard mystery. Kate Ellison expertely tackles the topics of death, and how it affects the entire family. Some family members pull away and others fall into a deep depression and a fog that never seems to lift. The patterns of someone who has OCD and how it affects their family and others around them. This part I especially found to be entertaining and true to form, as I personally live with 2 very OCD people in my house! Their strange quirks, and the inner struggles they fight within their own mind was so expertly depicted.

The Butterfly Clues is a great murder mystery, but its so much more! It is the story of Lo, who suffers from severe OCD. Think Mr. Monk ( my favorite dective!) but so much worse! Lo buys a necklace at a flea market, and soon discovers that it belonged to recently murdered Sapphire. Like many things in her life, that Lo can't seem to control, she is drawn in an inexplainable way to Sapphire and is determined to find out what happened to her, and why. During her search Lo discovers things about her own family, the death of her brother,and more that she never knew! Can Lo cope with the news surrounding her family,the loss of her brother, her mother's deep dression, and her own uncontrolable quirks? Or will her obsession get the better of her? Can she find the murderer before he finds her?

Well, you'll have to read this stunningly captivating, and gritting debut novel to find out!

Kate Ellison did an incredible job delivering her debut novel The Butterfly Clues. I can't wait to see what else she has in store for us. Trust me, this is one book you won't want to miss!