The Butterfly Summer: From the Sunday Times bestselling author of THE GARDEN OF LOST AND FOUND and THE WILDFLOWERS

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Butterflies are an iconic and popular sight during the spring and summer months. They are also important indicators of a healthy ecosystem and provide valuable environmental benefits such as pest control and pollination. As food for birds, bats and other mammals they are a vital part of the food chain and have been used for centuries by scientists to investigate navigation, pest control and evolution, as well as countless other subjects. Many species only have one generation each year and so the impact of a mass caterpillar die-off last summer will only be visible this year for butterflies such as the marbled white, meadow brown and small skipper. These grass-feeding species may be particularly vulnerable after last summer’s grasslands were parched in the drought. Prof Tom Brereton of Butterfly Conservation said: “There were not as many butterflies around as we might have expected given the fabulous weather over much of the butterfly season, and overall, 2018 ranked as barely better than average.

Grasslands are an incredibly valuable habitat for many of the UK’s moths and butterflies. Semi-natural grassland, pasture, arable land, urban parkland and any areas with rough unmanaged grass will all support a variety of butterfly species. In the height of summer these areas can be teeming with Skippers, Common Blues, Ringlets and Meadow Browns. Be sure to inspect any flowering plants (particularly thistles and knapweeds) as these can act as vital nectaring points for many butterflies. Pay close attention for the fast and subtle movements of smaller species as these can often disappear against such a busy environment. A prime example of this is the Small Copper which is notoriously hard to spot due to its minute size, fast flight and discrete colouration (when its wings are closed). LOOK OUT FOR:To begin with The Butterfly Summer was exciting and refreshing, the cryptic storyline pulling you in and not letting go. However from the midway point it began to considerably slow down and become rather dull, stale. Nina is such an interesting character that, by contrast, the snippets (rather extensive ones) about Teddy’s past were difficult to plow through. As Nina begins to unravel her previously unaware of family secrets, the reader also learns more about Teddy – her past, her experiences and her connection with a house called Keepsake. We would also expect that, as average spring and summer temperatures continue to rise, new butterfly species will cross the Channel, adding to our paltry total of fewer than 60 species (compared with almost 500 in Europe as a whole).

Essentially a story about the secrets (many of them hardly secrets at all) and obligations that, generation after generation, bind together the women of the Parr family. I'm afraid, especially in its earlier chapters, the characters from the differing eras yet to be established, I found the book confusing, the various strands to the plot unnecessarily convoluted which sadly meant instead of focusing on the story I found myself concentrating overly hard on just where (if anywhere) it was going. I received a copy of The Butterfly Summer from Hachette New Zealand to review. I can’t remember why this stood out to me but I’m glad it did. Nina grew up not knowing much about her father’s side of the family. He died when she was six months old. When things about her family are revealed out of the blue Nina finds herself digging for clues, determined to understand what’s going on. This second (mainly) hot and dry summer in a row is good news for butterflies – and butterfly watchers. The charity Butterfly Conservation agrees: its latest statistics for the common blue show that last summer, numbers in England were up a whopping 110% on the year before. Butterfly Conservation predicts that this year’s hot weather could mean that the species will have its best ever summer.

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Essentially a story about a dysfunctional family and secrets and obligations that pass from female generation to generation binding them all together for an eternity. It starts at the end really where the present day Nina meets an old woman in the London Library where she has been given life membership by her father before he went away when she was a child and who she never sees again believing him to be dead. This chance meeting (or perhaps it wasn't chance) starts her on a journey of discovery about her life, lineage and inheritance of Keepsake and the butterflies.

This is very different to what I’v read from Harriet before but it was a lovely surprise – a really unusual idea and I enjoyed getting to know all the women of the family.

Butterfly Conservation

But Randle said that even allowing for the earlier emergence of species, it was a disappointing result. Peter Marren, a naturalist whose latest book, Emperors, Admirals and Chimney Sweepers, tells the compelling story of the weird and wonderful names of our butterflies and moths, sounds a note of caution about the recent glut of sightings. While accepting that warm weather is good for adult butterflies, he points out that it may not be quite so favourable for their offspring, which often rely on a specific plant on which their caterpillars feed. The recipe: take a single child grown up with a depressed mother, give her an eccentric, entomologyst - and missing - father whose death was never solved, add an ex marriage, a boring work and mix together. During cooking time spice it up with an overly caring neighbour, a mysterious house and its macabre past, the sudden death - by creepy, unlikely to happen accident - of ex-husband, with whom the protagonist was about to rekindle romance and have a child, then scoop everything out of the pan and add other ingredients. A mess, that is. Native wild flowers are often considered to be more suitable than non-native ones, but the real key is making sure there are nectar-rich flowers in bloom from April through to October Dr Richard Fox, Head of Science at Butterfly Conservation, explained: “One of the biggest threats butterflies in the UK face is habitat loss. While the weather certainly has an impact on numbers from year to year, butterflies, moths and many other species can generally cope with variable weather. What they can’t cope with is habitat destruction.