“A dead body lay at my feet and all I could think was, Sailor Moon didn’t prepare me for this . . .”
Life has become boring and routine for Sabrina—until one day when she becomes enamored with a clique of popular girls at her college. They are everything she wants to confident, rich, glamorous, fun. A part of something. Everything changes when they invite her to be a Butterfly Girl. But real life is nothing like a glittery children’s cartoon. Wishes have consequences. Boys will be boys. And power can corrupt even the most magical of girls.
Butterfly Girl is a coming-of-rage novella full of campy fun and dark humor, perfect for fans of Bottoms, The Craft, and Jennifer's Body.
This entire book made my heart absolutely ache. Under all the beautifully written sparkles and perfect lies such a resounding deep pain and anger that mixed so well with my own. I want to keep reading, for there to be an ending with more closure, but I think that's what drives the message home all the more. Women and victims don't always get the closure they need and deserve. And that is the biggest tragedy of them all.
This was such a unique story. It was a fast paced read for sure. It was whimsical, fantastical, and murdery.
We have a cult of girlie pops who love to unalive silly boys. They remind me of those sky dancer toys from the 90’s. Sailor Moon meets Jennifer’s Body.
There was LGBTQ+ rep, lots of feminine rage, laugh out loud moments, and pop culture references.
The feeling of friendship and girlhood was almost tangible. It took me back to the feeling of having a slumber party with your girlfriends.
man, after bunny, i think i’m just tired of the “seemingly perfect girls form a friend group and then try to tear each other apart bc girls can’t help being catty and divisive” trope.
I thought this book was so cute & so metaphorical too like a deeper meaning to everything 🦋 I felt like a butterfly reading it & related to the girls so much
I saw this book recommended in a Reddit thread, took a chance on it, and I'm so glad I did. I love magical girls and this was a fresh take on the genre. It's raw, angry, feminist, and inclusive. I think the chapters styled as episodes and pop culture references were so fun! This is about girlhood and fighting the patriarchy at its core. I wish it had been a full length novel and I'm a bit puzzled by the ending, but I loved it overall. The descriptions are lush and the writing it whimsical; I couldn't put it down.
This book follows Sabrina, living a rather ordinary life in college. Until she becomes infatuated with a group of girls. Immediately she wants to be their friend, only to find out that they aren’t at all like she imagined.
A book about a group of magical girls, murdering men. What’s not to love?! I had a great time reading this. Read this in one sitting. Female rage. Cult vibes. The girls in the book are relatable. Even the things that maybe I didn’t want to be able to relate to. But it was real. Explores what it’s like to be a woman and things we have to deal with. Also, is SERIOUS need of a girls night with margaritas and killing boys.
'A dead body lay at my feet and all I could think was, Sailor Moondidn't prepare me for this...'
'[...] real life is nothing like a glittery children's cartoon. Wishes have consequences. Boys will be boys. And power can corrupt even the most magical of girls.'
'Butterfly Girl is [a] coming-of-rage novella full of campy fun and dark humour, perfect for fans of Bottoms, The Craft, and Jennifer's Body.'
"You either die a magical girl or live long enough to see yourself become a witch." - @dailymadoka on x.
Never have blurbs and hook-lines from a book been more accurate to its content and themes (the typo in the second-to-last above line aside, and to be fair, this indie book contains very few typos).
'Butterfly Girl' is like 'Madoka Magica' meets 'Heathers' meets 'Promising Young Woman' meets 'Less Than Zero'. It's an even darker, bloodier and more intense counterpart to 'A Magical Girl Retires' ("Magical girls exist because justice does not" has taken on a much deeper - and slasher - meaning).
It's a bizarre and unique concept of incorporating the Magical Girl genre into a feminist revenge fantasy, with sprinklings of dark humour and satire. It's like a gritty yet charming student film in novella form, if the student film can afford lots of fake blood, organs and body parts, and rich people locations. It is violent, cynical and depressing, but its passion, its anger, its content and commentary on behalf of justifiable female rage, is spot on, informative, and aims true, and thanks to good, breezy writing, it not only works, it's enjoyable to read. It can be read in a day - you will fall under its enthralling spell.
It holds nothing back, for women everywhere are mad as hell and will not take it anymore.
It's morbid, yet satisfying and cathartic.
The horrific, insidious evils of the patriarchy in real life; in the real world, that rewards monstrous, entitled men again and again; in the real world, where we are all breathing in misogyny - hatred of half the human race - like toxic fumes, unconsciously or not - it all makes murderous magical girls people worth rooting for.
The magical butterfly girls in 'Butterfly Girl' (the metamorphosis metaphor and theme is intentional, pointed and poignant) are adult college women who constantly drink all sorts of alcoholic and caffeine beverages, do drugs, listen to all sorts of songs on playlists, watch trash TV, and update on their social media accounts, such as group chats and TikTok, as makeup/arts influencers - in between and even during ripping rapist men's (and their complicit enablers') corrupt and rotten hearts out and crushing them, as well as literally ripping them to pieces. It goes to show how real, complex, and psychologically unstable, damaged and not all there these magical girls are.
'Butterfly Girl' is not all pro-revenge, let alone pro-bloody revenge, and actions have consequences, no matter how tightknit a group of magical girl-friends - who support and protect each other as well as other women - are.
There are all kinds of POC and LBGTQA+ rep. The leader of the magical butterfly girl gang, Nana, is trans, although she is white and comes from an obscenely rich family, which is a privilege she gets called out on. The newest and more "peaceful" magical girl, Zuzu, who is no less passionate about feminism and justice (and who is, quite amusingly, introduced suddenly one hundred pages into the book, as already part of the gang), is Black. And practically nobody is straight: the POV narrator protagonist magical girl, Sabrina, aka "Riri" (who gets initiated and hazed forty pages in) is clearly questioning and attracted to Nana, her leader and "saviour".
There is no such thing as "woke" and never has been. It's a word made up and, in an insidious and intentional twist, turned into an insult by angry, bitter, bigoted, entitled, paranoid arsehole haters. Diverse stories have always existed, and people like the fictional characters in them have always existed, and as books and media such as 'Butterfly Girl' continue to demonstrate, it is always necessary, important and urgent to get the truth about the state of our world out there.
Storytelling is the most powerful of human resources. Storytelling and the spreading of messages can help protect women and girls - all women and girls - and show them they matter and they have a voice - in fact, this has been the case since the dawn of human civilisation. They can be used to remind us to hold men accountable for their actions.
Evil, predatory, criminal actions, performed by misogynists, who get away with them thanks to other misogynists who enable and even support and celebrate them. Misogynistic men - whether they actively, directly commit crimes against women, or are complicit, as part of a "boys' club" - refuse to see women as people, refuse to take responsibility, refuse to "have their fun ruined", and refuse to have their privilege challenged in any capacity. They think they are entitled to treat women like free-range meat to abuse, silence, and dispose of however they want - effectively erasing women's humanity - and, as 'Butterfly Girl' bitingly puts it, it's misogynistic men projecting their wish to have a mother they can also fuck, encouraged and normalised by the patriarchy - all in the comfort and security that they can (and, tragically, most often will) get away with it.
Because the system is fucked up and doesn't give a shit about women, and misogynists know this.
As 'Butterfly Girl' points out, and I can't believe this still needs to be said in 2025-2026: not being a rapist is the bare fucking minimum of being a decent human.
If thinking "hey, maybe rape is wrong" is the best you can muster in considering that women are, whaddaya know, people - and worse, if you remain loyal, supportive to and protective of men who are rapists, thanks to cognitive dissonance and distance, brownnosing to privilege, and thinking the whole issue doesn't affect you (it does) - and you still don't care about women and their rights, then here I am, about to burst your security bubble: you still possess misogynistic, bigoted tendencies, and you seriously need to do better.
Also consider that men, and people of all genders, can be raped, too.
Rethink your biases, standards and priorities; listen, open your mind, and expand your horizons, and finally wake up to how fucked up and wrong the patriarchal society truly is.
And while revenge is not the answer, and is a dark, dangerous slope, where there is always the risk of becoming no better than the monsters you slay, especially when you've been doing it for a long time, and have lost sight of your cause and eroded to numbness and cynicism in response to the nonstop conflict and senseless violence - you are the violence and threat now...plus it solves nothing and does nothing to challenge society's double standards and bridge or lessen division, and further the path to equality...the fantasy of retribution and punishment coming to those who definitely deserve it is an enticing and irresistible one, thanks to the real world, that continues to favour, coddle and pander to men, and leave women in the gutter and in bloody pieces, sometimes literally...
'Butterfly Girl' - proof that you shouldn't judge a book by its indie, self-published status, and its cover (sorry, but I think the art is ugly). Brilliant also that it assures you at the beginning that no AI whatsoever was used in its creation, to go along with its content/trigger warnings.
Some letdowns in its feminism, however, are its causal use of the word "bitch", and PMS as a punchline. And its open, ambiguous end might be setting up for a sequel...? But it's an effective end to a magical realism, magical girl standalone story, regardless.
Deliciously abundant in wonderfully real, three-dimensional, distinct, and gruesome female characters (my favourite might be Booboo the ace clown magical girl), and their indulgent, human vices, to go with the feminist rage and revenge theme, I recommend this scrappy little, cult magical girl novella.
Similar Magical GirlTM reads, varying in tone and subversion:
I picked up this novella expecting it to be a fun and quirky book about magical girls with a bit of murder on the side, but it was honestly just sort of cringey. I can see where the inspiration for it came from, especially with the Modoka quote in the beginning, and I admire it for trying to do an adult take on that kind of media, but Butterfly Girl just falls flat.
Throwing a bunch of vulgar language, endless references to sex and occasionally drugs, and repetitive descriptions of gore into a half baked plot makes this book feel like its trying too hard to be cool and mature. There's also the issue with the girls dialogue sounding like it comes straight out of early #feminism Tumblr posts but with forced modern references. No human being alive talks like that, its just not realistic. There are much more natural ways to address the issues of sexism that don't make the whole thing feel like a joke. The writing just isn't very good. It feels very heavy handed with its messaging and much of it ends up being repetitive.
I also didn't really enjoy the storytelling. Every page is essentially also the same- the girls track down or run into a guy whose assaulted or is about to assault a woman, they confront the guy, he begs for mercy and the girls take delight in his suffering, then they rip out his heart and go back to singing karaoke or doing shots or putting on face masks. Not much really happens and, despite the fact that this book is mostly character driven, I had a hard time keeping track of who was who and what was going on with each girl. The gimmick of the girls names all being similar is cute in theory but it makes them all indistinguishable for each other in practice.
My final issue worth mentioning with this book is just how unlikeable the characters are in general. I enjoy that they each have fun quirks (even if I do have a hard time telling them apart) like one having a circus/clown motif, one being super girly and into pink, ect. but its so over the top and unrealistic at times that it just ends up feeling cringey again. I also like that the group of girls is very diverse with different races and from different backgrounds, one of them even being a trans-girl, which is awesome to see!
However, beyond their few fun defining characteristics, there is very little actual substance to each girl. Their personalities are very surface level and they don't seem to have much going on besides just wanting to murder for the sake of it. They act like they're here to save every girl wronged by a man but the second its inconvenient for them because their on vacation and might miss out on sex with some hot guys, they suddenly don't care about the sexual predator on the beach harassing women. I have no issue with them killing sexist assholes, but their lack of actual empathy when it comes to victims their seeking revenge for negates the whole thing. I suppose that's kind of the whole point at the end of the book, but there's so little substance in the pages to back it up that it just falls flat. Especially since the book ends so abruptly.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Butterfly Girl by Kennedy Cannon is this beautifully horrific commentary on sexual assault victims and all the other nasty things that happen to women in the world. I adored the gore and the complexities of each girl, having their own stories and uniqueness. I even loved how Nana and the other girls are slowly revealed to not be perfect, which is true to real life. Even in justified anger, there is room for us to be imperfect too.
My only gripe is that I wish it was pushed to be a novel rather than a novella. I love this writing style, and I feel like I needed more. What were the girls doing at school? Who are they outside of just their antics and magical girl fighting?
Highly recommend this to fans of "weird girl lit fics" or even just interested in a Jennifer's Body/The Craft/Madoka Magica inspired novella.
2.5, it had really interesting moments. But overall the plot and magic system kind of lost my attention.
The writing style was brilliant though. I love Kennedy's writing style and how much inclusivity there is in this book, with the main characters being different ethnicities and in the LGBTQIA+ community.