The Butterfly Room: An enchanting tale of long buried secrets from the bestselling author of The Seven Sisters series

Product Information

She decided to devote herself to her children and her new husband, with whom she had two more children, and for the next 10 or so years she concentrated on being a wife and mother. The Butterfly Room is a sweeping multi-generational saga of long held secrets, devastating despair and second chances. Riley’s writing is rich and engrossing. Her characters are convincing. Lucinda Riley divided her time between homes in north Norfolk and the south of France, and also built a six-bedroom holiday home on a beach on the Thai island of Ko Chang.

Maman was smoking now too, and I sometimes worried that she would set her letters on fire because she held them so close to her face when she was reading.Freddie cannot bear to hurt Posy if he tells her something about the past, so instead he crushes her by breaking up with her the day after he had asked her to marry him. Aparte de esto os cuento un poco lo que vais a encontrar. Es un libro narrado en dos tiempos, el primero nos muestra a una protagonista (Posy) desde su infancia hasta su juventud y el segundo en una Posy de 70 años. Los bloques de historia se van alternando de modo que vamos conociendo cosas del pasado que nos hacen ir entendiendo lo que pasa en la actualidad. Described by one reviewer as “a magical storyteller who creates characters we fall in love with and who stay with us long after we finish reading”, Lucinda Riley was best known for her “Seven Sisters” series of novels, following the lives and loves of six D’Apliese siblings (an anagram of Pleiades, the Greek myth said to have inspired the books), adoptive daughters the late “Pa Salt”, an elusive billionaire. I love stories told in dual time lines as the mysteries and secrets of the past unfold and crash into the present day.

Then a face appears from the past – Freddie, her first love, who abandoned her and left her heartbroken fifty years ago. Already struggling to cope with her son’s inept business dealings, and the sudden reappearance of her younger son after ten years in Australia, Posy is reluctant to trust in Freddie’s renewed affection. And, unbeknown to Posy, Freddie has a devastating secret to reveal . . . the dress—a shimmering cream 1930s vintage piece that covered the lumps and bumps that age had brought, and didn’t make her look like a ship in full sail. As you know, men generally tend to be much more basic than women; for the most part, less emotionally complex. They call a spade a spade, whereas women are more likely to say it’s a metal digging implement used in the garden. This book will certainly tug at all your emotions. There were a few scenes that had me tearing up and a few that made me quite angry. Riley certainly knows how to evoke an emotional response out of her readers and her characters all are so richly drawn that you can’t help but want the best for them. And the descriptions – whether of Admiral House itself or of the lands and garden – this book is perfectly worded so that you can visualize everything.

My darling, I’m afraid the beach isn’t suitable for playing at the moment. It’s covered in barbed wire and mines. Do you remember when I explained to you about what happened in Southwold last month?’ I saw Daddy give Maman a look, but she was reading her letters over her cup of café au lait and didn’t seem to notice. Maman always got lots of letters from France, all written on very thin paper, even thinner than a butterfly wing, which suited Maman, because everything about her was so delicate and slender. My thoughts:It’s no secret that I am a huge Lucinda Riley fan. I’ve read almost all her books to date, and those that I haven’t I plan to soon. I always find myself completely engaged in her stories, falling in love with her characters and swept up in their lives and this one was no different. I love multi-generational sagas. They are such a great break from all the thrillers I love reading and this one came at the perfect time. I was able to lose myself in Posy’s world and what a story it was. Starting when she was young and then jumping to when she is almost 70, I immediately found myself engrossed in this story. Posy has not had the most happy of childhoods and even later in life, she has encountered a few obstacles. Now she is nearing the end of her life and trying to decide whether she should scale down.

This was my first Lucinda Riley Novel and the description on the blurb appealed to me. A story set the beautiful Suffolk countryside in England, Posy Montague approaching her seventieth birthday and still living in the family home of Admiral House where history and secrets abound. When a face appears from her past, Posy is reluctant to trust again. A story about family and romance set between the years 1940s and 2006.I absolutely adored this book from cover to cover. The chapters just flew by, it was so intriguing yet had such a lovely calm feel to it. The pacing of the story was spot on, as a reader I never felt the plot was rushed or skimmed over, yet the story was never stagnate or dull. Each book focused on a different sibling and different corners of the world and the plot lines involved their collective quest to discover their true origins and to find a mysterious seventh sister – based on tantalising clues left by their father. The final novel in the series, The Missing Sister, was published in May this year and went straight to the top of book charts around the world. As I travel round the world, following in the footsteps of my factual and fictional female characters to research their stories, I am constantly humbled and awed by the tenacity and courage of the generations of women who came before me. Whether fighting the sexual and racial prejudices of times gone by, losing their loved ones to the devastation of war or disease, or making a new life on the other side of the world, these women paved the way for us to have the freedom of thought and deed that we enjoy today. And so often take for granted. Lucinda Riley, actress who was inspired by illness and financial ruin to turn her hand to writing bestselling bodice-rippers – obituary