The Butterfly Project

By: Emma Scott

Narrated by: Amy Melissa Bentley, Guy Locke

Length: 9 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

At age 14, Zelda Rossi witnessed the unthinkable, and has spent the last 10 years hardening her heart against the guilt and grief. She channels her pain into her art: a dystopian graphic novel where vigilantes travel back in time to stop heinous crimes - like child abduction - before they happen. Zelda pitches her graphic novel to several big-time comic book publishers in New York City, only to have her hopes crash and burn. Circumstances leave her stranded in an unfamiliar city, and in an embarrassing moment of weakness, she meets a guarded young man with a past he'd do anything to change....

Beckett Copeland spent two years in prison for armed robbery and is now struggling to keep his head above water. A bike messenger by day, he speeds around New York City, riding fast and hard but going nowhere, his criminal record holding him back almost as much as the guilt of his crime.

Zelda and Beckett form a grudging alliance of survival, and in between their stubborn clash of wills, they slowly begin to provide each other with the warmth of forgiveness, healing, and maybe even love.

Contains mature themes.

©2017 Emma Scott (P)2017 Tantor

I really liked this

I listened to most of this in a book trance. This is how you write forced proximity. Yes, you’ll have to suspend your disbelief about how Zelda (h) ends up living in a 400sq ft Brooklyn studio apartment with Beckett (H). Because it involved a lot of chutzpah. Not to mention a crazy trusting nature and a ton of naivety. But still, they did genuinely need each other to survive.

The writing was solid. The relationships felt real. The sex was good, not great - open door, but not raw or dirty or desperate. About 3/4 way through everyone’s emotional issues and physical ailments started to drag down the pacing of the story. It was still good, but much slower. This story is driven far more by the past and pain, than by the future and optimism. The HEA was great, one of those beautiful ‘things work out on all levels’ types.

My issues:

Darlene. Beckett’s drug addict friend from before he met Zelda. His relationship with her was always strictly platonic and both MCs love her. But there is no way in hell that I would give a drug addict a key to my house, the way they did. It made me think that this author has never met a drug addict.

Zelda’s trauma. Everyone grieves in their own way but (based on my understanding of the psyche of 14-year-old girls) the abduction event should have diminished in her mind, not grown. And her treatment of her parents was crap. She went home and torpedoed their family Christmas with her histrionics, then returned to nyc to give all the love she’d withheld from them to Beckett, and the drug addict, and a million other randos she just met. All this while her parents (WHO LOST A CHILD TO A VIOLENCE) pushed through with grace. They remained married, in the same house, and kept living. By the end Zelda’s ‘trauma’ felt like brat behaviour.

The narrators are good. But they read at different speeds, The guy was better at 1.2.

Great story let down by Guy Locke’s portrayal of Beckett

Really liked the story. One or two minor things seemed a little forced but overall the story was good. Liked seeing Z and Beckett’s growth both as individuals and in their relationship despite all the obstacles.

Unfortunately the male narration let it down for me. When you meet Beckett first time through Zelda’s POV with the female narrator he has a New York accent but when it’s narrated from his POV the accent was nowhere to be heard. It really threw me throughout the book as the consistency wasn’t there from the narrators.

Touching and Thoughtful

What made the experience of listening to The Butterfly Project the most enjoyable?

I loved the storyline, and the narrators used the right amount of feeling in each situation.

Who was your favorite character and why?

Beckett was my favorite because he totally faced his mistakes and tried to make up for them always.

What about Amy Melissa Bentley and Guy Locke ’s performance did you like?

The narrators helped me to feel the characters emotions. I liked there being a female and male voice. It helped with POV right away which can sometimes be more confusing with audiobooks than when reading a book.

Was there a moment in the book that particularly moved you?

This is a moving book overall so there is more than one moment, but one that really stands out is when Zelda forgives herself.

Any additional comments?

Zelda and Beckett have painful pasts. Both are struggling every moment with the emotional baggage. The author does an excellent job of putting the reader in their shoes. I easily understood their actions and feelings. I love these characters and how they don't play romance games. I suppose because they have seen firsthand how real consequences can be, they take life seriously. Both characters are sort of stuck and having trouble moving forward. They help to bring each other around to a better place. I definitely recommend The Butterfly Project. It's entertaining, but it also leaves you thinking. It's not a book that you can just finish and forget.

All the stars!

Emma Scott must have been given a magical pen to write The Butterfly Project- one that weaves the most flawless story, gives personality to such realistic characters, creates a tale that is charming and enchanted, and leaves your heart so full you know you must have lived the story yourself. That's the only explanation for how MUCH you feel inside. She leaves you with a true book hangover. She's just so unbelievably talented and what a gift it is that she shares her work with us! As with All In and Full Tilt, I felt SO MUCH and at the end of it all, I can count it as one of the best books I've ever read. I've never given a 10 star review, but why not start now? She gets ALL THE STARS.

And also? Beckett has read John Green's The Fault In Our Stars and when these two book worlds collided at 84%, my heart exploded into an infinity amount of pieces..... I swooned and a tear rolled down my face. "I once read that you fell in love like how you fell asleep: slowly at first and then all at once."

Yes, my friends, all the yeses. If you haven't yet listened to this truly phenomenal book, you simply must.

A Magical Journey of Hope and Forgiveness

This is my fourth Emma Scott book. The Butterfly Project was EPIC. Ms. Scott, I'm officially a super fan and I will now automatically buy every book you write without hesitation.

I don't even know where to begin with this review. The characters she writes are so real, such poignant portraits of the good and ugly things that make people uniquely beautiful.

The two main characters are dealing with tremendous pain and regret. The heroine is debilitated by the guilt from not being able to stop the pedophile who kidnapped and killed her younger sister. The hero is barely scraping by in a parole-enforced existence of misery and regret: the consequence of participating in an armed robbery that ended in the worst possible way.

While the back stories of both main characters are violent and tragic, I liked that the author only provided the barest minimum of detail to understand their pain. It seems that there is this trend in our culture to provide gory details...we're becoming desensitized to violence and even though this is fiction, I'd rather not hear about what a pedophile does to the child he kidnapped.

I was captivated from the very first meeting of the two main characters. There was just something there - a spark and instant connection that just couldn't be dismissed. The romance between them began with a friendship - a mutual benefit of each character in desperate need of a second chance. It was a very slow burn, but when it finally happened it was quite steamy.

As for the narration, it was very good. Amy was excellent - she was quite good differentiating male and female voices and imparted believable New York accents for specific characters. As for Guy Locke, I have two gripes. First, the New York accent Amy provided for Beckett disappeared when it was his turn to narrate. Second, his enunciation annoys. I've listened to several other audio books that he has narrated and that problem has been prevalent in all of them. Words like Manhattan come out as Manhat'n, button comes out but'n, swimming is swimmin'. It's kind of a lazy way of speaking by dropping t and g consonant sounds. It grates after a while.

This book ticked all the boxes for me. It was truly a journey. There were moments I smiled and laughed, and there were also several moments that brought me to tears. This book is definitely worth a credit...just keep a box of Kleenex nearby!

The power of forgiveness

Kicking myself for passing on this book so many times. Truth be told I had no idea what the book was about before starting but after listening to the sample I was immediately pulled in not only by the writing but by the narrator. The book does have a heartbreaking start and for most of the beginning all I felt was sadness. I felt everything the characters felt and despite the fact they felt hopeless I couldn't help but feeling hopeful. Hopeful that they could help each other forgive. If I could give this book all the stars I would.

So many stars!

This is a beautiful story with a beautiful narration. I ended up buying the ebook so i could re-read. All the stars for this slow burn romance.

5 stars for twinkling lights

A story of two people, one grounded in harsh reality, one looking for closure in art, form a unique bond over pizza & ziti. A down on the luck, his back against the wall Beckett Copeland is trying to just keep his head a over the water and deal with whatever pathetic cards life has dealt him. He finds himself taking a companion and cohabitant in his tiny studio apartment in bustling Brooklyn. There couldn't be more lonelier souls surrounded by cacophony of noise and swarms of people in NYC. One misstep and his life has slipped downhill so fast that he feels weighed down, restricted and contained in a tight box of the city. She's carrying guilt of her own, unable to change the course of an event which up ended her life entirely. They create book together and all their latent desires to alter life's course, situations and consequences. Vicariously living through their characters. But time travels in one direction only so they have to write their future instead, their own version of HEA. The plot is simple, but their journey is frustrating and dejecting. pockets of sunny love peek from behind the dark clouds that are enveloping their livesand that's what gives us hope that maybe they'll find closure and peace at the end of it all Bravo Emma. Nobody understands finer nuances of matters of the heart as you do. It's always a pleasure picking up your book. 5 stars for twinkling lights

Lovely.

I thoroughly enjoyed this story. Robbed and left with nothing but what she carries, Zelda meets Beckett at her lowest. Yet they have a certain undeniable chemistry and the story just takes off. The writing transported me through a lovely romance between two people hurting, and the journey as they redefine themselves was pure romance pleasure.

As an aside: If you hop on over to Amazon.com and open the Kindle sample for this novel, you’ll see a cool artwork for chapter 1. It ties in with the storyline beautifully. It does not appear with the Audible version, but that’s ok because you get excellent narrators instead to bring the story to life. Amy Melissa Bentley and Guy Locke were great as Zelda and Beckett.

I recommend this story together with FOREVER RIGHT NOW (5 stars in my opinion).

While THE BUTTERFLY PROJECT is a stand-alone story, I read FOREVER RIGHT NOW first out of order. FOREVER RIGHT NOW is the story of a secondary character in THE BUTTERFLY PROJECT. Zelda and Beckett make cameo appearances in FOREVER RIGHT NOW and it is very sweet to see where their relationship takes them in the future.

Great feel good story!

The graphic novel idea ties into the interesting story line well. I love happy endings.