Book Review: Lies Beneath by Anne G. Brown

Pages: 303

Pub. Date: June 12, 2012

Genre: YA Fantasy

Source: NetGalley

My Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

Goodreads says, "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 irresistible good looks and charm on unsuspecting 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."

Calder is a merman who lives with his sister in the depths of Lake Superior.  His family is desperate to avenge their mother's death, which they blame on Jason Hancock.  They love to kill humans in order to obtain their energy and they plan on letting nothing stop them when it comes to Jason.  The Hancock family returns to their lake house and Calder and his sisters start planning their revenge.  However, Calder, who is supposed to get close with Hancock's daughter, Lily, ends up actually falling for her, which obviously throws a major wrench in their vicious plans.  Calder is second guessing their revenge, but he has to deal with his sisters who are hungry for retaliation and are willing to do it at all costs.  Lies Beneath by Anne G. Brown is an entertaining debut; however, it ended up falling flat for me.

First off, the mermaids in Lies Beneath are not what I was expecting.  Overall they are not friendly and are quite the opposite.  The plan for vengeance was straight up intense and pretty violent.  It took me awhile to get rid of my preconceived notions as to what mermaids are like, thanks to Ariel.

Calder and Lily's relationship has a pretty strong case of insta-love, which at times, doesn't bother me in young adult literature, but unfortunately in Lies Beneath, it drove me a bit nuts.  I needed more development and questioning from Lily, which I wasn't getting. She finds Calder's behavior to be peculiar at times and when she does find out what is truly going on, she acts like it's commonplace.  

The point of view in Lies Beneath is from Calder, which is interesting since he's a male and we rarely see that in YA, but he was creeping me out the entire time. He tended to stalk Lily and it made my skin crawl.  Bottom line, it just didn't work for me.

Lies Beneath used a very paranormal cookie cutter plot, but I have to give credit to Brown as I never put the book down.  I had to know how it was going to end and although I was disappointed by the relationships, I liked the action and all of the sisters' plotting.  It was much darker and more wicked than I thought it would be.

If you want a paranormal read that doesn't include the usual ghosts, vampires or werewolves, check out Lies Beneath this summer, but if you want something special that stands out, search elsewhere.  

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