Butterfly Palace

3.5
I have mixed feelings about the book. For secular fiction, I'd have praised the moral points, of how a hero and heroine attempt to leave behind their former sinful relations with each other; for Christian fiction, I really didn't like scenes where the hero goes from reading his Bible one minute and trying very hard not to lust for the heroine the next. This would have worked a lot better for me if it had been Fiction rather than Christian fiction. Really, there's no reason it shouldn't be, other than who it's published by. The religion is no more than is to be expected from the culture of the day.

The plot was worthy of a much more epic book. There's tons of intricacy to what goes on, but the city itself is rather shadowy. Other than a few references to “big city”, “unaccustomed noise”, etc, there wasn't much attention paid to the scene of town. So much so that other reviewers, unfamiliar with the history of Texas and Austin, have come to the rather humorous idea that the story takes place in a “small village”. I think Coble took for granted that most of her readers might have had a high-school-level Texas history course. News: they didn't.

The characters themselves got most of the attention. This definitely is in the category of romantic suspense. I liked how characters related to each other and grew throughout the story. However, I'd have marked it higher under other circumstances. The plot idea had the potential to be a new favorite. You can't drive a story with character and action alone, especially a historical story, and expect readers to feel anything more than a mansion in a city of unformed mist.

I did guess the serial killer when I “met” him! ;)