A thoughtful, emotionally challenging yet beautifully readable novel. Naomi Cottle is a talented investigator and finder of missing children, here she searches for her own sister who has been missing since they were both children. Rene Denfeld is a must-read author for me. Her debut The Enchanted(one of our Books of the Year in 2014) is still lodged in my heart and my mind, and a book I often recommend. This is the second in the Naomi Cottle series, however can easily be read as a standalone. I personally though, would make the obvious decision of starting with The Child Finder. Rene Denfeld’s working experience means that she has a knowledge of horrific crime that the majority of people won’t ever, and shouldn’t ever know. She champions the hidden, the shunned, and makes them human and relatable. Celia, the 12 year old street child, really did creep into my heart, and the social aspects of the novel hit home hard. The dramatic feeling of tension that Rene Denfeld created, remained throughout, and I really had no idea as to how this novel would end. The Butterfly Girl prods and provokes, yet is wonderfully descriptive and eloquently written and I just had to choose this as one of my Liz Robinson picks of the month.
Naomi Cottle is an investigator who finds missing children. But the one child she has never been able to find is her sister. The two were abducted when they were very young but only Naomi managed to escape. Now, twenty years later, there is at long last a clue that her sister might still be alive.
Celia is a street child. Her life is tough and she has seen more things that any child should. But the local librarian turns a blind eye when she goes there almost every day to gaze at her favourite book, where she escapes, through her imagination, into a world of wheeling, colourful butterflies.
However someone is watching Celia. Street children have been going missing and the town has been turning a blind eye. It is only when Naomi turns up, looking for her sister, that they find someone who will listen to them. And someone who might give them hope.
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