This was such a powerful thriller, I was thoroughly engrossed and found hours had passed. I particularly enjoy literature set in different countries and many were covered in this book! Many issues were dealt with, including government corruption and child trafficking. Normally I would switch off from these topics as I like to read for a release from serious issues, but somehow I got swept along in the storyline.
The main characters are incredibly complex and that depth was something I particularly enjoyed. By the last couple of chapters I thought I had worked out how it would conclude, however I was surprised by the ending and thought it paved the way really well for book 2.

Thank you everyone at NetGalley, the publishers and to Walter Lucius for allowing me to read this book.
I am sorry to say that I struggled to finish it. I am hoping to go back to it at a later date.
I really wanted to like the book as the very beginning showed promise and I was even describing the book in the staff room to colleagues, but then it went downhill in my opinion.
I found that the main character Farah was over sexualised and that seemed to cheapen her.
I was confused with the story line and found myself having to go back to see who was who, no easy task on a Kindle!

** The first instalment in the best-selling original Dutch thriller The Heartland Trilogy **

A young boy is found in woods outside Amsterdam. Broken and bloody, he appears to be the victim of a brutal hit-and-run.

Investigative journalist Farah Hafez, on visiting the site where the boy was found, comes across a burnt-out car with two bodies inside - a sinister clue to something far darker than a simple road accident.

It is just the start of a journey that will lead her into an intricate web of crime and corruption and deep into a past that Farah had sought to escape - a past that nearly killed her.

This is an intense thriller that engages you with powerful writing and strong interesting characters that the author uses to draw you into the complex storyline, it has you hold your breath in places and want to cry in others by the pure saddens of it all. The author is clever with his use of language and the breadth of places the story takes you. It is a part of a planned trilogy and I must admit to looking forward to the second book in this series.

While the concept was sound I found the writing style clumsy and had great difficulty connecting with the characters. I'm sorry to say that this book did not hold my attention. If I recall it was compared to Jo Nesbo which is a claim I cannot support as I generally can't put down one of his books. I hate to give a bad review as there's so much hard work that goes into writing a book, but I wouldn't recommend this book since it didn't make me want to keep turning it's pages to find out what was going to happen to its characters. I will not be posting this review online.

This was a very long, complicated and fascinating story. Lots of different threads intertwined and some great, well described characters. A story very commensurate with present times. I was disappointed with the conclusion as I wondered how it was going to be resolved, then I discovered that it was the first part of a trilogy!

I think something must have been lost in translation, I didn't enjoy this book at all. I didn't warm to the characters, there were so many typing errors, and I know it's a novel, but it was just too unrealistic and far fetched. Sorry

I can see why Butterfly on the Storm is being compared with the Millennium books. This is a very strong start to the series, with brilliant plotting, unpredictable turns of the plot and characters with hidden depths and realistic dimensions. I will definitely continue this series and recommend it to fans of tense, intriguing crime novels.

Butterfly On a Storm

Set primarily in Amsterdam, Butterfly On a Storm is the explosive first instalment in Lucius' Dutch thriller Heartland trilogy.

A bit different to my usual reads, I really enjoyed this book. Intricate and intense, I definitely want to read the rest of the trilogy to see where Lucius takes this storyline.

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher, 4*.

Butterfly on the Storm is a crime drama set in Amsterdam. Journalist Farah Hafez investigates a hit and run in woods on the outskirts of Amsterdam. The victim, a young Afghan boy dressed as a girl, is left critically ill. Farah, who came to the Netherlands as a young refugee is drawn to the boy and translates for the medical staff. Soon, she is drawn into a murder investigation that takes her from Amsterdam to Moscow and finds that the traumatic past she left behind has caught up with her. Intriguing and unusual characters and complex plotting make this an absorbing read.

Beautifully written and an enthralling tale but the abrupt ending came as a shock and left me feeling cheated. Unless of course there is a sequel pending and this was meant as a cliffhanger ending?

great read and easy to follow story line. look forward to reading more from this author.

Journalist Farah Hafez is in the accident and emergency department when a small boy is wheeled in on a trolley. Recognising his barely audible murmurs as her native tongue she offers to translate for the doctors, but this simple act of kindness ties her to the victim in ways she could never have imagined. The boy, dressed in a silk gown, make-up and heavy jewellery, was left for dead on a country road just outside of Amsterdam, and Farah is determined to discover what he was doing there. Her investigations cause her to stumble into Amsterdam’s dark underbelly of child-trafficking, exploitation, corruption and blackmail and this time it goes all the way to the top.

This novel has all the building blocks for a great mystery, and there are some parts that are extremely gripping. The suspense and drama are well paced, and readers will feel invested in the outcome of the unnamed hit-and-run victim. Unfortunately, however, the protagonist is not very likable or believable, which overshadows the story somewhat. She is incredibly beautiful, and incredibly damaged, with the body of a model, (which is fine, if a little clichéd) but on top of that she is a trained martial artist, who is unable to control her temper, who has a secret past, and whose aversion to feeling anything causes her to cheat on her partner. Perhaps we are supposed to forgive her many transgressions because she has had a hard life, and maybe I would have done if she had seemed genuinely vulnerable under her hard exterior but instead she comes off as childish, impatient and selfish. She also seemed to do most of her investigating while dressed in party clothing and saturated by a water cannon.

My final gripe with the book is how little work the police seemed to do. Farah is the one who investigates the surrounding area after the crash and figures out where the boy came from – something that it never occurred to the detectives to do. She is the one who discovers overlooked clues and figures out what they mean, while the police are aimlessly running from one side of Amsterdam to the other.

It is worth a read for its cast of interesting side characters and some exceptionally exciting scenes, and hopefully Farah will develop into a more credible protagonist for part two of the trilogy.

Riveting read - exhilarating to the very end. I can't wait for the next book in the trilogy to find out how it continues. I was attracted to book as it was compared to the Millenium Trilogy which I couldn't put down - it did not disappoint. Farah is an investigative journalist but is also a bit "off the wall" and has a mysterious past. I was a bit confused by the cliff hanger ending but I presume that this is to set up the next instalment in the trilogy.

I struggled to connect with this story, I'm sorry to say. There were a handful of characters all striving for main character status, each with their own demons and lengthy past traumas they were trying to escape. Just too many people caught in the fog of historic personal events, in my view. Their backstories were complex with not as much cross over as I would have expected. By the end I felt more interested, as the action built up, only for a few far-fetched events to revive my doubts.

My lack of connection extended to the characters. Farah was a writer with boundless energy whom everyone seemed to love but I couldn't give a fig about her. She didn't write a blessed thing in the time we knew her in this book but was always dressed perfectly, whatever to occasion. Danielle was simply annoying, regardless of her issues, and insisted on making bad choices throughout. Diba was your text book bent copper whilst Joshua, his partner, was just too perfect for words. I did like Paul but it took ages for him to emerge on the scene. A pity. He could have saved the book had he caught an earlier flight.

There was a lot of promise here but I simply couldn't keep it together. Some brave writing that had flashes of brilliance. The widely cast net of a story did make a bit more sense at the end but not enough to save Butterfly on the Storm for me.

Butterfly on the Storm is the first in the Heartland Trilogy by Dutch author Walter Lucius.

A young boy is found outside Amsterdam, the victim of a hit and run incident, he mutters a couple of words to journalist Farah Hafez who recognises a fellow Afghani refugee which starts a fast paced political crime thriller that spans the Afghan revolution, the Russian invasion, attitudes to refugees, people smuggling and child abuse at the higher levels of society. This is a cracker of a novel, inevitably it will be compared to Larrson's Millennium Trilogy (Girl with the Dragon Tattoo etc) but I found it more grounded and less dependent on techno miracles. I'm looking forward to reading the next in the series.

Butterfly On The Storm tells the story of several characters who take part in trying to solve a crime mystery. There are literally so many characters within this story; some good, some evil, that I can't write information on all of them but most of them held their own story throughout, I thought. Sometimes we get characters who aren't really necessary to the overall plot but all of the characters personalities played into this story well.

Butterfly In The Storm really suits anyone 18+ that wants a thrill while reading, I think. I say it's for 18+ because there are some quite horrific things that happen. I think that reading something that's scary is different to watching something that's scary. If you're watching it, you can't avoid it but if you're reading it, you can make it as scary as you want to. There's threatening behaviour as well as murders in Butterfly In The Storm, along with betrayals and sexual behaviour so that's why I say it's best for age 18+ readers.

Butterfly On The Storm is a political thriller, which I don't normally like reading because I find them boring but this story had a lot more than just the political jargon and thriller aspects. There's a slight romance storyline that I hope will be played more upon in the next books as well as funny parts too. As well as these things, there are great characters that really put the story up another level for me. This is a very character driven story. There's an overarching plot line too but the characters personalities' are what made it so good to read, in my opinion.

Butterfly On The Storm basically tells the story of a young boy who's found, after an altercation. We, as the reader don't know how he ended up in the predicament he was in. The story explores why the boy was left in the situation he was in as the other characters and we, as the reader try to work out what happened.

Minor spoilers below.

Now, as I said it's impossible for me to write all the ins and outs of Butterfly On The Storm because the story is just so dense. It's a long book as well. Farah is one of our main characters. She is at the hospital when the boy that the mystery revolves around is bought in. This boy is dressed as a female because he's part of a Bacha Bazi ritual, which is when young Afghan boys dress and act as girls for the pleasure of older, rich men. The mystery is why was there a boy found outside, a distance from the hospital run over by a vehicle? This takes up a lot of the story but there are many surprises to do with this plot too as well as many deaths. I won't give anything away as to who dies or how. There's also bad language so that's another reason for young people to not to read Butterfly On The Storm.

What I liked about Butterfly On The Storm...
- The thrilling atmosphere the author created.
- The little romance involved.
- How this will be a trilogy.
- How the author based this novel on true events, and real people were mentioned in and around the characters of the story.
- How the setting is in Eastern Europe. We don't really get many books set in Eastern Europe.

What I didn't like about Butterfly On The Storm...
- That there were too many characters. The only characters that really cared about were the Afghan boy, Farah, Calvino (a detective working on the case) and a doctor. The rest were there but they didn't have a huge effect on me.
- That the book was a little too long. Some of the scenes just weren't necessary, I don't think. Having said this, the story read really quickly. This is probably down to the short chapters.

I'm giving Butterfly On The Storm 3.5 stars (4 on Goodreads). I enjoyed it but would have liked for it to have been a little bit shorter. Also I don't understand what the title means to the overall story yet...maybe that will become clearer in the next books. The characters were my favourite part of the book. I loved their differing personalities. It would have been better to have had not so many characters though as the story seemed too busy. What I mean by this is that at one moment we were following one story, then in the next chapter, we're following something else.

I'm excited to read book 2 when it's available so stand by for my review of it...

I thoroughly enjoyed this excellent first part of the trilogy, which has a solid cast of characters, a dazzling web of inter-connected themes, and some expected and unexpected twists and turns. It exposes very well a sensitive issue - child abuse - as a sub-theme of the plot, which is very current in the modern day. That theme is linked brilliantly into the wider web of related ideas, including power and corruption at the highest level. I eagerly anticipate books two and three.

This book is billed as being similar to the Millennium trilogy but in my opinion it doesn't come close. For one thing the characters seem too contrived, and there are too many loose ends at the end of the novel,although if there are more books to come,that might explain the reason.
There are some fairly explosive episodes but it just didn't ring true for me.The translation was a bit clunky too.
Sorry,but it just didn't do it for me.

Loved this book, great story highly informative of other cultures and full . Of mystery, with an unexpected ending.

I didn't really enjoy this book, it had a slow start and then in the middle started to becoming gripping but soon fizzled out. I found some parts became irrelevant.