Butterfly Tattoo: Ultimate Edition

... so this is how you do it. This is how you write a book about grief, loss, mourning, second chances at love and life. As an added bonus we have an unapologetic and unabashed bisexual character who's sexual identity isn't erased, mocked or doubted. Not by him.

Michael has been floundering through life after the unexpected death of his husband Alex. He meets Rebecca and perhaps unwittingly she's able to bridge a connection with his young daughter Andrea, one that he's been unable to make. Andie is so closed off to him that she no longer calls him daddy but rather Michael for reasons that are absolutely logical. Meanwhile after three years Rebecca herself is just starting to regain her feet after a nearly dying from the attack of an obsessed fan. This trio of outwardly and inwardly scarred people come together to form a new whole blanketed by love.

Rebecca's work world is set within the Hollywood community and as far as I can tell realistically told. There are vain, superficial, stereotypical types but there are also normal, hardworking, everyday people who happen to work in the film industry. Michael himself is one of them. He's an electrician. Rebecca used to be a well known sitcom actress but after her attack and subsequent “disfigurement” has successfully pursued the development & production aspect of the industry. Michael was happily married but became widowed after a drunk driver killed his husband Alex.

I liked that neither Michael nor Rachel questioned his bisexuality. That aspect of his life was neither mocked nor belittled. Friends on both camps originally question the relationship but more out of protectiveness and loyalty not in a bid to erase bisexuality. I liked the pace at which the romance developed and that some things were left maybe unresolved i.e. Michael's relationship with his father, because sometimes in life there aren't solutions for everything. I liked that in spite of their attraction and falling in love Rebecca and Michael have to figure things out on their own and in their own time. I liked that even though there are mystical or quasi religious aspects to the story they weren't overwhelming but rather palatable to unbelievers like Michael and myself. I liked the motif of the ocean as an ever renewing source of life. I liked that Michael is unsure as a parent and screws up but manages to get up in his own time. I liked that Rebecca has to overcome her vision of herself on her own before she can be truly open to accept Michael's attraction and love. She's not cured by magic d*ck or true love.

The romance is more on the sweet side than the hot but it is exactly what the characters need at this juncture of their lives. Healing. Wholeness.

One of the reasons that kept this from being a 5 Star read for me was almost paradoxical. Alex Richardson, Michael's deceased husband, is so perfectly and exquisitely rendered, that in spite of knowing his fate, I found myself wanting to read his and Michael's love story: the origin of their friendship, that fateful first kiss, the first date. I want to know about Michael's childhood, his father, and how he ultimately came to know Alex. I want to know about Laurel and Casey. Same goes for Rebecca's friends: I want to know more about Trevor and his relationship with Julian, I want to know about Cat and Evan Beckman. So I guess for me this story was a bit cursed by the writer being so good at rendering the other characters so vividly. Go figure. You're damned if you do and you're if you don't.

The other thing is that I felt at times queer and gay were used interchangeably, even by Michael, and they're not quite the same thing. But that is perhaps getting too hung up on terminology. My bigger gripe is a personal one which I've had the misfortune? to have also encountered on another recent read and that is that apparently one year of mourning has become a defacto acceptable time to get re-hitched upon the death of a loved one. Mind you I've told my hubs that I'll be at his wake with a date and wearing red but this whole “falling in love” at the year mark of having lost a long time life partner and true love seems arbitrary and mostly just a way of getting narrative angst. Being attracted to someone else? Sure. Falling irrevocably in love? I'm not sure. I do believe that life is for the living so I'll go with it.

In any case I enjoyed this very much.

p.s. I also did the audio on this. The chapters are pretty much alternately split between Michael and Rebecca which are respectively done in the audio by [a:Kevin Scollin|7024485|Kevin Scollin|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png] and [a:Paige McKinney|7410608|Paige McKinney|https://s.gr-assets.com/assets/nophoto/user/u_50x66-632230dc9882b4352d753eedf9396530.png]. They're both adequate if perhaps unexciting and will do if you need your hands otherwise engaged. Neither one can seem to do a southern accent which is the background for both Michael and Rebecca but do fairly well with an English accent (Trevor) and a little girl (Andrea).