The Butterfly Assassin Review

Tws: A loooooot. This main character's parents deserve an award for biggest abusers in the shape of a bullet to their heads. The main character spends the entire book unpacking her trauma and we get to the end with her being nowhere close to the end.

Innocent by day, killer by night: a dark, twisting thriller about a teen assassin’s attempt to live a normal life.

Trained and traumatised by a secret assassin programme for minors, Isabel Ryans wants nothing more than to be a normal civilian. After running away from home, she has a new name, a new life and a new friend, Emma, and for the first time in Isabel’s life, things are looking up.

But old habits die hard, and it’s not long until she blows her cover, drawing the attention of the guilds – the two rival organisations who control the city of Espera. An unaffiliated killer like Isabel is either a potential asset . . . or a threat to be eliminated.

Will the blood on her hands cost her everything?

From Finn Longman, an exhilarating new voice in YA fiction, comes an addictive new blockbuster series for fans of global phenomena The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Killing Eve and The Hunger Games.

General Impressions

I started "The Butterfly Assassin" on a day on which I was in the mood for uncomplicated YA fiction, after initially becoming interested in it due to the author's identity and the themes this book promised to deal with.

I ended flying through this book in a day and most of my enjoyment came from the author's ability to present us with our favourite tropes and give them an original twist to the point in which, unlike most YA books, you truly fear for the main character and are unable to predict what will happen next. For every action or inaction, there were consequences and they come from the most unexpected of places.

For a while, everything you hope it's not gonna happen does and for every problem that needs to be circumvented, Isabel chooses the absolutely worst option because she has no good ones. My absolute favourite thing about this book was exactly that: after being used to a certain kind of heroine that is able to avoid the worst scenarios and consequences, and is able to remain at her very core kind and hopeful, you quickly learn that Isabel won't be able to so as a reader, you don't get to trust in the author's love for the character to keep her safe.

That tension sadly didn't maintain itself for the last third of the novel, becoming a bit predictable in how the teenage heroine was put in the spotlight by adults that should be better than the absolute waste of space they were and how the only solution was self-sacrifice on Isabel's part but even then the ending was so dark and unexpected that I want to read the sequel just for the chance to see some light at the end of the tunnel. (Those are problems that might have been fixed in the final version of this text.)

Although Isabel's character arc can be found in a thousand YA novels, this book was unique in its setting and the places and times the author took inspiration from. I loved the Esperanto throughout the book, particularly in the chapter headings, the social commentary was absolutely brilliant, the secondary characters were really interesting with motivations and secrets of their own and the way the author chose to write about Isabel's trauma was complex and understanding of a survivor's mentality and long term effects of domestic violence rather than just a dark past to be used as a stepping stone into heroism or villainy.

I'm really looking forward to seeing what this author is capable of doing after having a few more books under their belt.

Thank you to Simon & Schuster for this proof.

Rating: 3.5/5