Butterfly Bayou

4 stars — Honestly? This felt like a non-menage version of the Nights in Bliss, Colorado series Ms. Blake originally wrote under the pseudonym Sophie Oak. Which sounds like it should be a criticism, but honestly? That’s one of my favourite guilty pleasure reads, so I absolutely did NOT care that so much of the set up felt familiar. It was just fun to have another quirky town full of crazy characters to fall in love with. I’ll start with the narrator — this is my first listen of Jessica Almasy, and while she was solid, she probably won’t make my favourites list. She nailed the humour in this one, and I actually really enjoyed her accent (though no idea how accurate it is). She was also actually really amazing at portraying emotion — I felt so much for all these characters, and my heart ached at the arguments. Where she fell shy of 5 full star goodness is mostly just that I had a REALLY hard time figuring out thoughts vs dialogue, and I don’t know if it was me, but I had a hard time denoting scene changes/time passages. There were so many moments where I was pulled out of the story and confused because all of a sudden I would note the passage of time in the plot, but I didn’t hear a pause or anything. Not sure if that makes sense. She was pretty solid on different character voices though, and was pretty consistent with those. Lila was a fascinating character. I wasn’t sure how I’d like her at first, b/c she’s very type A, and so buttoned up. But man you got to see so much of what made her who she is, and I admired the traits that I don’t even remotely share with her. She’s smart, tenacious, determined, and I LOVED seeing how she’d made strides in moving forward with her life with the help of counselling. I also appreciated the choices she made in her relationship, and that she pushed the people she loved when they needed it. She was definitely a heroine to admire, even with her faults. Armie had MUCH farther to go in this book. He was sweet, kind, thoughtful, and wonderfully protective. I loved that in general he appreciated a strong woman, and wanted to support her but not hold her back. My problem is that he was realistically damaged from his past, and it took him a realistic amount of time to get past that damage. It was just so FRUSTRATING!!! In general I loved Lila and Armie together. It was passionate in both a steamy way and a contentious way. They’re very strong characters, and you could tell they loved with all of themselves. I was genuinely worried how the Noelle story would play out. At first I was shocked by some comments…then I figured out it was probably going to be part of the growth in the story. But it was hard to watch the way she was treated, b/c I know some people truly see disabled people in that way. BUT I was wholly satisfied with it in the end, and hopefully it will be eye opening. The little bits of suspense were pretty solid. I saw them coming, but they added some fun and mystery, and were generally just a teeny part of the plot. The best, the absolute best, part of this book is the town and its characters. It’s the same reason I love the Nights in Bliss, Colorado series. Are they completely realistic? Eh. Do I care? Not one bit. They’re hilarious, and quirky, and they mean well. I will definitely be checking out more books in this series, because the town is a character unto itself.