THE BUTTERFLY SISTER by Amy Gail Hansen

It's only August but already I think I've found my #1 read of the year.  The Butterfly Sister is so beautifully written and the characters so real that I can hardly believe this is Amy Gail Hansen's debut novel.  Others have called it a perfect beach read but it is so much more than that.  I started it one evening but the next day once I picked it up I literally could not put it down.  It's that good.

Ruby Rousseau, native of New Orleans, attended a small women's college in Wisconsin on the shores of Lake Michigan.  For reasons you will learn later, she dropped out one semester shy of her degree.  Then one day a suitcase that belongs to one of her classmates from college, Beth, is delivered to Ruby.  She had borrowed it months earlier and her nametag is still on it.  Supposedly the suitcase was never picked up at Beth's destination and the airline is returning it to the person on the tag.  But where is Beth?

Ruby had written a thesis her last semester involving female writers who committed suicide.  Inside Beth's suitcase is a copy of Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own with a mysterious notation in the text.  This must be a message, so wanting to return the suitcase, Ruby begins to investigate.  She finds that Beth has simply disappeared.  This mystery brings Ruby back to the college and memories she had tried to forget.  It also puts her in danger.

Admittedly I was drawn to this plot by my attachment to women's colleges.  For my last two years of high school I attended a women's prep school and college that I dearly loved.  I did enjoy that aspect of this book, but delving into Ruby's life and mind is what kept me turning pages.  The characters in this book are still alive to me several days after finishing the book and actually kept me from getting into my next read at first. 

This is a great book and I do hope you will read it.

Highly recommended
Source:  William Morrow/HarperCollins publishers