Butterfly in Frost

by Sylvia Day

[pamela]

Ok, there’s a lot to unpack in Sylvia Day’s recent Novella Butterfly in Frost. Every year I read a trashy romance novel for Christmas, it’s become my tradition. Usually, I have fun with them, but this one left me absolutely gobsmacked – and not in a good way.

Butterfly in Frost wasn’t my usual fare for my annual Trashy Christmas Read. It’s a bit too ‘legitimate’ for want of a better word. My usual fare is more in line with heaving bosoms, vampire Viking angels (yes, all at once…), modern time travellers and Scottish lairds, or even the age-old oil and water coming together to make sweet, sexy vinaigrette in book form. Butterfly in Frost, however, was a bit more character-driven, and a lot better written than what I’m used to from the genre, with sex scenes written by someone who has obviously actually *had* the sex she’s describing, rather than someone just fantasising about things they have little to no experience with (it’s one of the things that too often bothers me about the romance genre).
There was actually the potential for a pretty interesting character piece here – an exploration of how two people coming together to share in their experiences of differing grief can benefit them both in the long run as they build something new, together, outside of their individual experiences. It could have been sweet, confronting, poignant. But it was let down by some pretty questionable stylistic choices by Day.

A warning: There will be massive plot spoilers going forward, so read at your own discretion.

Firstly, Day chose to write Butterfly in Frost in the first person. We experience the narrative from the protagonist, Teagan’s, point of view. She tells the story as it happens, which means that the final twist at the end, that the man she’s falling in love with is her ex-husband, and that his dead son is also her dead son, makes absolutely no sense. She tells us about her recent divorce, and mentions her ex-husband by name, talking about how the divorce threw her into a deep depression – and it turns out that relationship was the one before her most recent marriage. Through her entire budding relationship with Garrett, she never once shows any indication that she knows or recognises him which makes her as the first-person narrator a poor choice. If she has genuinely no recollection of her life with Garret because of the grief of losing their son, this could be a compelling narrative to pursue. But it does mean that Teagan needs real psychological help, not just her ex-husband moving in next door and trying to rekindle their relationship with some “sexual healing” bullshit.

The second poor choice was to write this story as a novella. The most important aspects that could have made Butterfly in Frost a genuinely interesting book were skipped over in a few paragraphs to make way for some more schmaltzy romance and some, admittedly, steamy sex scenes. Teagan and Garret meet and then are inexplicably all over each other by the next page. The big reveal of Teagan and Garrett’s real relationship is neatly tied up in some monologuing in the very last few pages of the book. This is why Romance so often isn’t taken seriously as a genre. There’s no reason why good books can’t also include some healthy sex, so why just gloss over all the parts of this book that really needed the developing? The ending could have been so much more poignant if we’d seen Garrett try to rekindle their relationship in steps. If we’d been given more of an insight into Teagan’s fragile mental health. If we’d seen Teagan’s final realisation of what she lost, and experienced her coming to terms with it and trying to navigate her new reality, and her relationship, without her son. But we didn’t get any of that. We got a shitty romance novella using grief and mental illness as a marketing gimmick, rather than taking its subject matter seriously.

Maybe I was expecting too much from Butterfly in Frost. But Day has no one to blame for that but herself. If she’d been a worse writer I would have just followed along for the ride, but she’s not. She’s actually good. If she flexed her writing muscles a bit more here, and took some time to really develop her character’s relationships, and talk about how grief and mental health takes a toll, this might have been a genuinely moving read. But she didn’t. So it wasn’t. Instead, a relatively ‘meh’ romance novella became a huge disappointment.