The Roses of May by Dot Hutchison Review

WARNING: THERE MAY BE SPOILERS BELOW

“I carry the names of those other victims, but it's not from guilt. From sorrow, usually, and from rage. Our agents tried to protect us from the extra wounds that come with serial cases, but it isn't their fault that we're broken people who don't always react the way  we're expected to.”- The Roses of May, Dot Hutchison

Four months after the explosion at the Garden, a place where young women known as the Butterflies were kept captive, FBI agents Brandon Eddison, Victor Hanoverian, and Mercedes Ramirez are still entrenched in the aftermath, helping survivors in the process of adjusting to life on the outside. With winter coming to an end, the Butterflies have longer, warmer days of healing ahead. But for the agents, the impending thaw means one gruesome thing: a chilling guarantee that somewhere in the country, another young woman will turn up dead in a church with her throat slit and her body surrounded by flowers.

Priya Sravasti’s sister fell victim to the killer years ago. Now she and her mother move every few months, hoping for a new beginning. But when she ends up in the madman’s crosshairs, the hunt takes on new urgency. Only with Priya’s help can the killer be found—but will her desperate hope for closure compel her to put her very life on the line?

If you'll recall, I really loved The Butterfly Garden. It was creepy, it was intense, it was a crime novel, it just worked for me. So when I found out it would be a trilogy, and a second book would be coming out this year, I just sprang for it. 

Unfortunately, this book ended up only being alright. I didn't hate it, but I didn't love it.

I think the problem with this book was that it felt confused. It didn't know whether it wanted to be a sequel to The Butterfly Garden or a standalone/companion crime novel or a contemporary YA drama. This, combined with the bizarre without warning shifts in POV between first person singular and third person singular and second person singular made this book feel jumbled together. The transitions between these weren't smooth at all, and made for a jarring reading experience.

Which is a shame- I would have really loved this book if it was more focused. Because the idea behind it was fantastic- serial killer who kills one girl a year, and each girl is found surrounded by a different type of flower? I like that idea almost as much as the idea behind The Butterfly Garden. 

I mean, the writing wasn't the problem. Hutchison is honestly a very good writer, and I especially love the way she writes descriptions, making them seem so effortless. While I did cringe a bit reading from the killer's POV, as he sounded too stereotypical and even a bit like Clover from The Cellar, that part was my favorite part of the book- it was the only part that really intrigued me. Priya's parts got a bit boring, and I was annoyed that we had to keep following her, half the time wondering what made her so special and the other half wishing she would get killed off to give this book some needed action. The FBI agents bored me more than they should have had, and again I kept wishing that Hutchison just focused on this killer and not Eddison's (also, Eddison didn't really sound like Eddison in this book, don't really know why) "relationship" with Priya, which got real old real fast, or the butterflies. 

I suppose I should have been more happy they came back than I actually was. But I kept feeling like that storyline was over, and every time I saw Bliss and Inara again I just kind of rolled my eyes and sighed. Not to mention Priya was basically just like Inara. I think in trying to force this book into a sequel she lost a lot of what made The Butterfly Garden work so well. Perhaps the interview format in the first book with the kind of distant FBI agent would have worked better for this book, too. I felt like the killer in this book was second fiddle to everything else and wished I could get more invested in the mystery than I actually was.

Maybe also another problem is that only one victim was focused on way too much. I wanted to hear about the other girls, who were mentioned but not even given a blurb. They were far more interesting than Chavi, sad to say. 

But I'm still going to stick with this trilogy for the final book, probably with Mercedes Ramirez as the main FBI agent (though, was she in the last book? I don't remember). Hopefully, she'll go back to the roots (pun not intended) of the trilogy with it. Still, my hopes for this trilogy have been knocked down to middling if that.

7 out of 10