An amazing and outstanding book. I loved the progression of the protagonist as she found her strength and her voice. I highly recommend

The story drew me in from the first page. I didn’t want to put it down and couldn’t wait to pick it back up. She had me!

Bernice McFadden writes with complete vision of how she wants you to see her story as it unfolds. The chapters are very short but enough to withhold information and my attention. Fast reading and memorable characters.

I knew that the story was going to explore my emotions once I reached the chapters of “Wife of the Gods”. The journey was trying already, but I had to put the book down in light of what was to come.

I cannot wait for her next literary creation. Everything she has published has been a great read. This is another! ( )

Abeo Kata lives a charmed life in Port Masi, a city in the fictional country of Ukemby. Her mother was a model and her father is a well-compensated employee of the government treasury. After her grandfather dies and her father brings her widowed grandmother to live with the family in Port Masi, Abeo's perfect childhood begins to crumble. Her father's job is in jeopardy as he stands accused of embezzling, her little brother's health is failing, the family car is broken down, and the house is springing leaks. While Abeo remains sheltered, her father finds himself being crushed by the weight of this reversal of fortune such that when his mother suggests the old custom of giving Abeo as trokosi to appease the gods and save the rest of his family from ruin, he gives in to the pressure, and Abeo's new, tortured life as a slave of the gods begins.

McFadden's storytelling really shines at the beginning of the book when she is drawing out the idyll of Abeo's childhood. Well loved and ignorant of the troubles beginning to brew among the adults in her life, Abeo is insulated in her perfect life. The childlike joy Abeo feels on adventures with her visiting aunt Serafine makes it all the more potent when her perfect life is torn away and she is enslaved at the religious shrine.

After that, things get kind of strange. McFadden's writing style is blunt and simple. The book reads quickly moving from plot point to plot point with little embellishment. In fact, McFadden's writing is so straightforward at times it seems nearly artless. In the parts where Abeo is enduring torture at the ends of the "priests" at the shrine, this comes across as stark and affecting. However, in later parts of the book, it seems to gloss over the details of Abeo's recovery, oversimplifying the struggle of recovering from unspeakable trauma.

There are parts of this book that really shine. It is a compelling, unputdownable read on the surface. However, it doesn't seem to stand up to much reflection. Under scrutiny, it doesn't seem to come together all that well as a whole and the unusual writing style doesn't seem altogether appropriate to the story being told. ( )

This review can also be found on my blog.

This is a difficult book to review; it feels wrong to give it a number and talk about it as “good” or “not good.” The story follows the life of a girl named Abeo, who is born into a relatively privileged West African family. After bad luck befalls them, Abeo is brought to a shrine and is left in ritual servitude. Praise Song for the Butterflies is quite simplistically written, but its matter-of-fact tone makes the horrors within all the more appalling. Unfortunately, it also holds the characters at arms length and makes it difficult to empathize with them on anything more than an artificial level. While the story is important and eye-opening I didn’t find it to be a meaningful literary experience. I’d recommend it to anyone interested, if you can stomach the content. ( )

This story about a little girl's life in a fictional West African country is often touching and occasionally brutal. Although the coming-of-age story is not especially unusual, the details are. Although the country is fictional, the practice of trokosi, “ritual servitude,” is not. And ritual servitude is a nice phrase for slavery and additional abuse, emotional, physical, sexual, mostly on young girls. It has been outlawed but is still practiced. Although this was well written book, it certainly was not a fun read. I continue to be astounded by what inhumane atrocities we humans think is okay, and even blessed. ( )