Books like Butterfly

Butterfly is your typical V.C. Andrews book - lots of gothic drama and romanticism of the uglier sides to humanity. It's a relatively short book for what it is, easy enough to read, but I didn't really find it nearly as fantastic as it boasted itself to be. I found the way it talks about adoption to be disgusting and terribly dated (the book was released in the late 1990's and this prevailing attitude that adoption is a competition for the most charismatic child seemed a bit silly all things considered), and the book heaps on the drama and glamorization at the weirdest and worst of times. From what I could tell the book is set in the 1990's in urban New York but it's written as if set in the 1950's in terms of the dialogue, so it just seemed very strange to me.On the bright side, it's not terrible. It does draw attention to parents who have (or adopt) a child simply for the purpose of living through them, of using their child as a reflection of everything they themselves wanted to be but never could, and in our modern era of child beauty pageants, intensive soccer camps and children being pushed to have the latest cell phones and clothing, maybe it's time this book came back into fashion if simply to show readers that love matters more than outward traits. There's also good morals about doing what you love because you love it, not because someone else wants to exploit your talent. Janet loves ballet and throughout the story she is able to realize what's more important in life. I'm not sure about the negative connotations about the wheelchair-bound mother adopting a child, though. It seemed to imply that a person with any sort of physical or mental limitation may adopt a child for selfish reasons, and there's a dreadful atmosphere of envy throughout, much like in the equally disturbing Flowers in the Attic books (luckily Butterfly spares readers of the pervasive subplot of incest that was so strong in the latter, though.) As a mass-market thriller it's not a bad book, it has some good qualities and I could see it being popular with a lot of readers, but personally something about it was just too strange, depressing and mixed-up to me.