The Dying Butterfly Review

Holly and Tony were a young couple in love. They thought they had all the time in the world but they were wrong…

As the illness spread and the population was dying chaos sprang forcing Holly and her group of family and friends to hit the road. A plan set and necessities stocked they left their homes.

One night as the deranged charged their camp they were forced to scatter, separating Holly from everyone she knew and loved. In her search for her group she stumbled upon a small community.

By the light of a flickering candle, from a typewriter she found in her travels Holly tells us about the illness, her new life, and her search for the ones she lost. She shares her new philosophies on life, all that we take for granted each and every day, and human vulnerability as she reminisces the past, and her dreams of one day being reunited with the love of her life and her family.

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This was one of my favorite “zombie dystopia” novels that I have ever read! It seemed so realistic, and the characters were all relatable.

The virus that turned people into the deranged started off slowly, but no one took it seriously. It started in countries such as China, so people thought that it was too far away to affect them. Then governments started to implement travel bans, but people found ways around them. Signs about the symptoms of the virus were put up in public places, but people would just power through what they thought was a common cold. When they turned, they would bite a bunch of people around them, thus spreading the disease. By the time people realized how bad the disease was, there were too many deranged to stop. Governments crumbled and it slowly became every person for themselves.

Holly lived through all of this, from the normal times to the times where they had to flee their homes to escape their neighbors. She had her loyal boyfriend Tony, her brother and his wife, and her parents. Everything seemed perfect, and in the time right before everything got shut down, she was even able to marry Tony. They had their honeymoon in her parent’s basement and then fled the city the next day. Everyone thought that as long as the family stayed together, that everything would be okay.

This was a STRONG family. No matter what was thrown at them, they were determined to stay together and fight back. They would never lay down and just take what happened to them, and they knew that if one of them was infected, that they would be the ones to end it. They would give the person as long as they could, and then once the person started going through the change from human to deranged, they would put them out of their misery. They had a whole plan, and to be honest, this made them some of the most realistic dystopian families. None of that “we will find a cure” or “we gotta protect our stuff” mentality. We protect each other, we stay alive, and we stay together. Easily up there in my top 10 science fiction families.

The one thing that I didn’t like about this book was the middle. There is a long period of time where the story is just focused around Holly, and I was a bit lost. Then, when the other characters start to show up in the story again, the book says that 2 years have passed. 2 years?? I actually thought it was a few weeks or months at best, not years. I did like the new characters, but that time skip messed me up a bit.

Other than this, the book was just about perfect in my eyes. I know that there’s most likely going to be a sequel, and I can’t wait to read it. I can’t wait to see what happens in this world, and what happens with Holly!

Even at the end of the book, something just didn’t seem right. I feel like I still don’t trust these new characters fully, and what happened to the government in these years since the outbreak? Like I doubt it just disappeared, something has to be going on. I’m sure that this will be explained in the next installment, which is why I can’t wait!

I would recommend this book to anyone looking for a new NA/upper YA dystopian zombie novel.

I received a copy of this book and this is my voluntary review.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 books.