The Butterfly Summer: From the Sunday Times bestselling author of THE GARDEN OF LOST AND FOUND and THE WILDFLOWERS

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Essentially a story about a dysfunctional family and secrets and obligations that pass from female generation to generation binding them all together for an eternity. It starts at the end really where the present day Nina meets an old woman in the London Library where she has been given life membership by her father before he went away when she was a child and who she never sees again believing him to be dead. This chance meeting (or perhaps it wasn't chance) starts her on a journey of discovery about her life, lineage and inheritance of Keepsake and the butterflies. In this poem, Frost describes the spring day when swarms of blue butterflies fill the air with colour as they fly: for the poet, they are ‘flowers that fly’, and would sing if they could, so joyous is their flight. It is the third year in a row that the count has recorded its lowest-ever average abundance, a worrying sign that once-common flying insects are continuing to disappear from Britain. Here’s a sad poem which draws on the parallel between a young girl and a butterfly developing from its chrysalis.

Lepidopterists, specialists in butterflies and moths, are also concerned that the drought this summer could affect next year’s numbers, particularly butterflies such as the ringlet, whose caterpillars feed on grasses in late summer. “Egg-laying females might not have found anything suitable to lay their eggs on because their food plants were dry and desiccated,” said Randle.

Oh.my god. Just where do I begin? This was undoubtedly the most gripping, suspenseful, enthralling book i have ever read. I mean, the increasing sense of mystery and suspense was just amazing, incredibly, something I simply cannot get over. That and how spine-chilling it actually was! The mysteries and suspense just left you wanting to read more and more! I was up til late finishing it because it would've just drove me crazy if I had these major mysteries just hanging over me, I was determined to see them unfold and find out what this dramatic suspense would lead to! Two books within one. For the main part The Butterfly Summer is the contemporary story of Nina Parr and Keepsake, the magical home that is her birthright. Interspersed with her story is that of her grandmother, Theodora aka Teddy.

But drought is a major problem as plants wither and die, meaning female butterflies may struggle to find anywhere to lay their eggs, or there is not enough food for the caterpillars when they hatch. Essentially a story about the secrets (many of them hardly secrets at all) and obligations that, generation after generation, bind together the women of the Parr family. I'm afraid, especially in its earlier chapters, the characters from the differing eras yet to be established, I found the book confusing, the various strands to the plot unnecessarily convoluted which sadly meant instead of focusing on the story I found myself concentrating overly hard on just where (if anywhere) it was going. That’s in sharp contrast to other groups of flying insects, such as moths and damselflies, of which several species have successfully colonised in Britain. Surely it is only a matter of time before those new butterflies join them. At university I read Classical Studies, which is a great way of finding out that the world doesn't change much and people make the same mistakes but it's interesting to look at why. I was at Bristol, and i loved the city, making new friends, being a new person. One piece of good news was the widespread appearance this summer of a day-flying moth, the Jersey tiger, which appears to be thriving in the changing climate and breeds in gardens. Its numbers rose by 136.5%.But we should remember that butterfly populations have always fluctuated from year to year, depending largely on the prevailing weather conditions. To assess these figures more carefully, we really need to look at the long-term trends, which are rather less positive. For many of Britain’s favourite summer butterflies, including the once-common and familiar small tortoiseshell, there has been a steady decline over the past 40 years or so. This is due to a combination of factors, of which the most serious are the intensification of farming, combined with a more general fragmentation and loss of habitat.

The book had been moving along at a slow enough pace for me as there was a huge amount of setting up to do and then all of a sudden an event turned everything on its head and finally we got to the heart of the matter and I began to take more of a an interest in what was going on. Nina discovers there is a legacy, a heritage to which she has a right to as she is near to turning 26. Nina hears of the house Keepsake which is now rightfully hers, the question is does she really want it and all that it brings or is she happy to meander along in life a little bit lost and not quite happy with everything going on? Nina wasn’t a character that I especially warmed to, I felt she expected all the answers to be there right in front of her fairly straight forward and requiring no thought process. I wanted more of an element of discovery and uncovering the past on Nina’s part. It felt too dragged out in the present and bits of Nina’s so called journey went over my head. In my mind the story only got going when the past began to come to light.

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This summer is proving good for butterflies so far because it follows two hot, sunny summers, allowing their numbers to build up over the seasons. Research by scientists at Butterfly Conservation confirms that the long-term population trend of some of our most charismatic insects is indeed downward, with more than three-quarters of the UK’s butterflies and two-thirds of larger moths in decline. He also notes that the recent mass appearance of painted ladies – recalling the extraordinary summer of 2009, when tens of millions of these butterflies could be seen throughout the UK – has absolutely nothing to do with the weather here in Britain. Instead, it indicates that conditions were favourable on the fringes of the Sahara in Morocco, where these butterflies came from. The common blue has taken to the wing in record numbers. Photograph: Mark Searle/Butterfly Conservation/PA