Fifty million readers devoured The Seven Sisters. Far fewer are familiar with The Butterfly Room, a novel Lucinda Riley wrote alongside her famous saga—yet one that shares all its strengths: a heroine confronting her past, long-buried family secrets resurfacing, and a house that knows far more than it seems.
Lucinda Riley passed away on 11 June 2021, shortly after the release of the final instalment of her series, which sold more than fifty million copies worldwide. But between two volumes of The Seven Sisters, she slipped in a novel that remained largely under the radar—and one that deserves to be brought back into the spotlight. Head to Suffolk, England, to uncover The Butterfly Room.
Dual timelines
Fans of The Seven Sisters will recognise the narrative structure that made the saga a global success. The story moves between time periods, with clues planted in the past gradually illuminating the present, and revelations carefully held back until a breaking point.
We follow Posy Montague as a child during the war, a young mother in the 1970s, and a grandmother in the present day. Each shift in time tightens the tension, in a perfectly controlled back-and-forth.
The house of memories
In the Suffolk countryside, Admiral House stands at the heart of a garden where Posy once chased butterflies with her father. She grew up there, mourned her husband there, and is now preparing to sell it: the house is falling into disrepair, bills are mounting, and no one in the family can afford to save it.
Yet the house has not finished revealing its secrets. In Riley’s hands, the building becomes a character in its own right.
A heart left unresolved
Posy is far from a flamboyant heroine. A widow, she devotes her time to gardening and quietly prepares for her seventieth birthday.
But the return of Freddie—the man who broke her heart fifty years earlier without explanation—shatters this fragile calm. You keep turning the pages to understand why he left, and why he has come back.
Intimacy over escapism
Where The Seven Sisters travels the globe from Rio de Janeiro to Norway, The Butterfly Room never leaves Suffolk. The novel trades exotic settings for intimacy, with its drama unfolding within the walls of a single house.
Lucinda Riley explores themes of domestic violence, toxic legacies and unspoken tensions between generations with her trademark sensitivity. She spares no one, yet judges no one either.
From actress to literary phenomenon
Before becoming a bestselling author, Lucinda Riley was an actress. Born in Northern Ireland in 1965, she trained in classical dance before studying theatre in London, landing a leading role in a BBC series at just sixteen. Her career could have unfolded under the spotlight—but mononucleosis changed everything. Confined to bed at twenty-two, she began writing to pass the time. Her first novel, Lovers and Players (1994), was published two years later under the name Lucinda Edmonds. She never returned to the stage.
She passed away at 55 after a battle with cancer, leaving behind around twenty novels translated into 40 languages—and millions of devoted readers.