Narrated by Emily Barrett
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
1868, Morpeth. Theodora Breckenridge, still in mourning after the loss of her parents and brother at sea, is more interested in working quietly on her art at the family’s country estate than she is in finding a husband in Sydney society, even if her elder sister Florence has other ideas. Theodora seeks to emulate prestigious nature illustrators, the Scott sisters, who lived nearby. She cannot believe her luck when she discovers a butterfly never before seen in Australia. With the help of her maid Clarrie and her beautiful drawings, Theodora is poised to make a scientific discovery that will put her name on the map. Then Clarrie’s newborn son goes missing and everything changes.
1922, Sydney. When would-be journalist Verity Binks is sent an anonymous parcel containing a spectacular butterfly costume along with an invitation to the Sydney Artists Masquerade Ball the same day she loses her job at The Arrow, she is both baffled and determined to attend. Her late grandfather, Sid, an esteemed newspaperman, would expect no less of her. At the ball, she lands a juicy commission to write the history of the Treadwell Foundation, an institution that supports disgraced young women and their babies. As she begins to dig, her research quickly leads her to an increasingly dark and complex mystery—a mystery fifty years in the making. Can she solve it? And will anyone believe her if she does?
| Length | 10 hours and 43 minutes |
|---|---|
| Author | Tea Cooper |
| Narrator | Emily Barrett |
| Release Date | November 28, 2023 |
| Publisher | Harper Muse |
While I assumed this story would focus on butterflies, I was surprised to find that it was far more complex.
Theodora Breckenridge dreamed of becoming a scientific illustrator. And in 1868 when she spotted a monarch butterfly she hoped her career would be jumpstarted. That’s because that species had never been seen in Australia. So she and her housemaid began searching for more spottings of this species.
The story then takes a twist when Breckenridge’s housemaid’s young son Charlie is abducted. Though the woman who took him was never located, thankfully Charlie was.
To complicate the story further, though it does add interesting details, there is a parallel timeline set in 1922. This story is about Charlie’s daughter Verity Binks. Verity, a budding journalist is forced to take a step back when men step into their former careers as the war ends. However, during one of her freelance jobs, she uncovers interesting ties between her current investigations and her past.
This story blends several historical events regarding that time frame. And, like many narrators, Barrett, does an excellent job of breathing life into the characters.
My Concerns
As an audiobook, The Butterfly Collector required me to keep on my toes and listen for the timeline changes between the 1860s and the 1920s. Especially, toward the beginning it felt unrelated and even slightly hard to follow.
Final Thoughts
While the various topics that were included in this story were interesting, I’m not sure they enhanced each other. They felt a little disjointed and forced at times.
All in all, I still recommend this book that introduces interesting information that I wasn’t aware of.
My thanks to NetGalley and Harper Muse for the ability to listen to this #gifted audiobook.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Audrey Gale long dreamed of being a writer, but never anticipated the circuitous road she’d take to get there. After twenty-plus years in the banking industry, she grew tired of corporate gamesmanship and pursued her master’s in fiction writing at the University of Southern California. Her first novel, a legal thriller entitled The Sausage Maker’s Daughters, was published under the name A.G.S. Johnson. The novel explores one woman’s struggle to find her place amidst the upheaval of the radical 1960s. Her second, The Human Trial, is the first book in a medical-thriller trilogy inspired by Gale’s own experiences with the gap between traditional medicine and approaches based on the findings of the great physicists of the 20th Century, like Einstein and Bohr. Both The Sausage Maker’s Daughters and The Human Trial incorporate Gale’s fascination with historical and scientific research, and always with women finding their places. Gale lives in Los Angeles with her husband and dogs where she is found hiking the Santa Monica Mountains every chance she gets.
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