Review: Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown

Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown
Pages: 303

Release Date: June 12, 2012

Publisher: Delacorte Books for Young Readers

Find: Goodreads | Amazon

Cover Comments: I love it. It fits with the book, and it's beautiful, but even a little bit spooky since the red near the top could remind you of blood.

 Calder White lives in the cold, clear waters of Lake Superior, the only brother in a family of murderous mermaids. To survive, Calder and his sisters prey on humans, killing them to absorb their energy. But this summer the underwater clan targets Jason Hancock out of pure revenge. They blame Hancock for their mother's death and have been waiting a long time for him to return to his family's homestead on the lake. Hancock has a fear of water, so to lure him in, Calder sets out to seduce Hancock's daughter, Lily. Easy enough—especially as Calder has lots of practice using his irresistable good looks and charm on ususpecting girls. Only this time Calder screws everything up: he falls for Lily—just as Lily starts to suspect that there's more to the monsters-in-the-lake legends than she ever imagined. And just as his sisters are losing patience with him.

Review

Lies Beneath has a lot of things going for it. There's a fresh and interesting take on mermaids, it's written from a guy's point of view, and it has a gorgeous cover. So I'm really disappointed that I didn't like it as much as I had hoped.
  The story starts out with Calder, our main character, and his three sisters plotting to murder the man who caused their mother's death. If Calder succeeds in helping with Jason Hancock's murder, he'll no longer be tethered to his sisters. He'll be set free. To do this, he'll have to get close to Hancock's daughter, Lily. But, of course, he gets a lot more attached to her than intended.
 I really do like the new angle on mermaids as vicious and electrical. It's just a new way of looking at them that I'd never really considered before. But I wish that there had been more about that aspect in the book. There's a tiny little mermaid history lesson near the end, but I wanted to know more about this new mermaid mythology.
  One of the big reasons I wasn't crazy about this novel was the pace. It felt pretty monotonous until the climax. The writing is fine and everything, and I was never really bored per se, but I would have loved a little variation from just the wooing Lily storyline.
    Calder and Lily are our main characters, and the love story in Lies Beneath, but I never connected to them much at all. Calder, of course, is focused on killing and revenge for a lot of the book, and all I really know about Lily is that she likes poetry, dressing in, erm, "unique" clothing, and she has a thing for guys with tails. Can't say I wouldn't be with her on that last point though. Characters are an important part of the story for me, and since I didn't care much about Calder and Lily, I didn't care much when they were in danger. There is a pretty adorable scene between the two of them near the end of the book though, where I really did enjoy them. I just wish all the scenes had made me like them as much as that hammock scene did.
  The ending was pretty much the  best part of the book for me. The pace picked up, there were a couple cool, although slightly icky twists, and I was genuinely surprised by the turn the story took. It took me a minute to puzzle it all out in my head, but I like that. I got sort of a stand-alone feel from the end of the book, but it turns out this is a series. I probably will pick up the next one, to hopefully learn more about the unique mermaid mythology, and to find out where the characters go from here.
  I would recommend Lies Beneath for its unique twist on the fairy tale mermaid type and the fairly interesting storyline. I really do think the majority of people will enjoy this more than I did, so just try it out, and hopefully it'll work for you.

 2.5/5