Marin wants to change. As a shy, insecure girl who’s had an unfulfilling life, she hopes to turn over a new leaf in college. Things don’t go well at first, though. After all, you don’t become a completely different person overnight, unless you happen to find some miracle drug. And that’s exactly what Marin found in Bette: an addictive drug that makes her forget her worries and insecurities. Bette is a free-spirited bohemian who takes Marin on all sorts of wild experiences. The pair develops a strong bond deeper than friendship as Marin broadens her horizons... or so it seems. Leslie Liautaud’s Butterfly Pinned follows Marin as she juggles self-discovery, past trauma, and the looming darkness surrounding Bette.

Butterfly Pinned has all the hallmarks of your standard cautionary tale about an innocent young woman going out into the world and getting corrupted. But it’s so much more than that. It’s also about growth, connections, what is and isn’t love, and doing the right thing in a world that rewards evil. I can’t think of a single bad character, including minor characters who barely show up, but Bette was the most fascinating. She was somehow both more straightforward and more complex than I thought at first, a testament to Leslie Liautaud’s writing. I also appreciated the moments of tenderness and hope in an otherwise fairly dark story, which makes everything seem much more real and hard-hitting. Butterfly Pinned deals with some heavy themes and topics, including sexual assault and substance abuse, but it’s also beautiful and inspiring. If you’re into dark coming-of-age dramas, do give this a try.

Butterfly Pinned by Leslie Liautaud is a powerful psychological thriller. Marin wants this year of college to find a sense of self and discover a new life. One day, she meets a captivating, rich girl named Bette, and they become close friends. Bette makes Marin feel special, and Marin easily loses herself in her luxurious world. Marin's life gradually changes completely. She becomes addicted to Bette. She neglects her studies, parties, takes many pills, and drinks alcohol, blurring Marin's reality. While blackouts become normal occurrences, she also starts experiencing weird and terrifying things, and no longer knows what is real and what isn't. However, someone warns Marin that Bette likes to collect people, manipulate them, and morph them into who she wants them to be. Does Bette deceive Marin? Will Marin be able to turn her life around before she gets hurt and her future is destroyed?

Butterfly Pinned is a compulsively readable novel that explores themes of privilege, power, trauma, family dynamics, self-discovery, toxic love, manipulation, the process of reclaiming one's life, and the price of reinvention. Leslie Liautaud masterfully crafted a story that revolves around an intriguing bond between two young women that starts as an innocent, much-needed friendship. It reveals the danger of losing yourself in someone else's world and a whole new level of manipulation and deceit, making this novel one of the most fascinating thrillers I've read in a while. Anyone who loves psychological thrillers packed with compelling, flawed characters or a story in which the protagonist fights back, showing that they must make a trip to hell and back to discover what they're made of, should read this book.

Looking to reinvent herself as a new student at an out-of-state college, Marin is particularly susceptible to outside influences. When she befriends Bette, an alluring and wealthy poetry major, Marin quickly spirals out of control in a lifestyle centered around partying and social status. Despite the depravity Bette introduces her to and the clarity afforded by brief periods of sobriety, Marin is incapable of extracting herself from their increasingly toxic friendship. The bond between these two friends is not just unhealthy, it is imminently dangerous. Leslie Liautaud’s Butterfly Pinned focuses on a central theme of metamorphosis in which Marin will be destroyed in her coming-of-age journey before she can rebuild herself anew from the remnants of her former life.

Butterfly Pinned stands out from other psychological suspense novels in its use of the first-person passive voice, giving it a memoir-like quality. As Marin recounts what happens to her, moments of stream-of-consciousness-style writing and glimpses of her moral awakening attempting to crack through the surface of her consciousness make the story incredibly realistic and powerful. The characters are complex, and their flaws take center stage. This book is the perfect read for someone seeking raw and unforgiving literary fiction. It deals with many dark and challenging subjects, such as drug abuse and sexual assault, so readers who may be triggered by such topics must enter this book with caution. Overall, I was utterly spellbound by Leslie Liautaud’s prose and struggled to set the book down once I started reading.

In Leslie Liautaud's Pinned Butterfly, Marin starts her year at university thinking she's getting a fresh start, but the isolation puts her on the radar of Bette, a reserved student who draws her into a tightly controlled social world. As that connection deepens, Marin’s daily decisions begin to follow Bette’s direction. Bette has all the tools to quietly redirect Marin's path and separate her from the life she intended to build. Bette provides access to exclusive environments and experiences, and these slowly alter Marin's perception and implode her sense of agency. Meanwhile, Bette has secrets of her own and holds them close. When a series of incidents leaves Marin so vulnerable that harm is inevitable, she is forced to reconsider how much control she has surrendered. The story unfolds through a formal account, where Marin is required to reconstruct events in full and confront the extent of Bette’s influence.

Leslie Liautaud’s Butterfly Pinned is really difficult to read, especially as a parent to a daughter of Marin's age; a story that effectively taps into our deepest, darkest fears. Let me tell you, Liautaud is masterful at breathing life into that very darkness. Marin's descent happens in a measured way, with Liautaud exercising the restraint of a skilled writer in a gradual unfolding. She gives us glimpses of what we don't yet know: photographs in Bette's room that inject a crazy twist, and Marin being pinged on social media with the unthinkable. Liautaud crafts Bette through controlled styling and an emotional volatility that vacillates between withdrawal and love bombing. It's spectacular and totally believable. Liautaud uses yachts and family estates that juxtapose against crowded university dorms and a public bus to lean into the disparity, and it's brilliant. Readers with a taste for psychological thrillers centered on identity and influence will eat this book up. Very highly recommended.