Book report ~ what I'm reading now

The Butterfly Effect ~ by Rachel Mans McKenny, 2020, fiction (Iowa and Costa Rica), 328 pages

Is there such a thing as an anti-social butterfly?  If there were, Greta Oto would know about it — and totally relate.  Greta, an entomologist, far prefers the company of bugs to humans, and that's okay, because people don't seem to like her all that much anyway, except for her twin brother, Danny.  They've recently had a falling out, though.  So when she lands a research gig in the rainforest, she leaves it all behind.  But when Greta learns that Danny has suffered an aneurysm and is now hospitalized, she abandons her research and hurries home to the middle of nowhere America to be there for her brother.  But there's only so much she can do, and unfortunately just like insects, humans don't stay cooped up in their hives either; they buzz about and socialize.

Coming home means confronting all that she left behind, including her lousy soon-to-be sister-in-law, her estranged mother, and her ex-boyfriend Brandon who has conveniently found a new non-lab-exclusive partner with shiny hair, perfect teeth, who can actually remember the names of the people she meets right away.  Since Brandon runs the only butterfly conservatory in town, and her dissertation is now in jeopardy, taking that job, being back home, it's all creating chaos of Greta's perfectly catalogued and compartmentalized world.  But real life is messy, and Greta will have to ask herself if she has the courage to open up for the people she loves, and for those who want to love her.  Sometimes it takes stepping outside of our comfort zone to find what we need the most.

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I bought this for my Kindle last summer, but I haven't read it yet.  Yes, I admit that I buy books faster than I can read them.  This will count for my TBR 22 in '22 Challenge of reading 22 books from my TBR shelves this year.

Sunday Salon is hosted by Deb at Readerbuzz.