Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown

Release Date: Out now!

Publisher: Delacorte Books

Pages: 303pgs

The Story

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.

The Review

A big thanks to the publisher on netGalley for accepting my request in reading this book early!

After seeing the cover so many times around the internet and reading more about the storyline, I was so very eager to get my hands on this book. When my request was accepted on netgalley I was straight away reading this book and I have to say . . . I'm really, really impressed. There's not a terrible lot of mermaid books out there - at least not ones that have surprised and entertained me - but I have to say this book right here certainly did all that. Because I absolutely loved it!

Amongst the dangerous lake waters, a deadly family secret has been kept for several years and sets up a very dark, gritty storyline about mesmerizing mermaids whom are hell bent on getting their revenge. For Calder and his purely evil sisters, they survive merely on preying upon the life forces of those people that cross their path in the lakes and in theh oceans. While it may seem enough to survive on, but for these beautiful mermaids they hunger for far more than human life forces. In fact, they want to seek justice for their mother's death that happened many years ago and when the family responsible returns to the lake, Calder must use his good-looks and wicked charms on Lily, the daughter of the father he wants to kill more than anything. Problem is: He's slowly falling in love with her and his sisters will do just about anything to make him think twice of it.

What I loved most about LIES BENEATH was how uncomfortable and unpredictable this book had made me feel. You loved it. You hated it. You loved it all over again. You hated it. And yet you wanted more of it! There were so many conflicting emotions happening throughout this book. For example, the main character, Calder, was supposed to be the main hero of this mermaid tale and yet he wasn't exactly how you would define your traditional 'hero' to be like. Like how many other readers felt from previous reviews that I've read, I too felt like he was more of an antagonist than anything else, which was rather a different take for a hero and a method in which the author was most successful at. I mean, let's face it you guys . . . he's a murderous merman forced to use trickery and deceit in order to get what he wants when he wants using all means necessary. By this, he uses the girl Lily as his bargaining chip to get to her father. But even though you should hate him for playing our Lily, but in the end you just can't help but be captivated by him as well and loving him for being such a trickster.

While Calder was a perfect character and even though you hated his sisters for the majority of the book (even though you secretly find them mysteriously cool), but I really enjoyed Lily's character the most. I loved how she questioned every single one of Calder's motives right from the beginning and why he was suddenly interested in someone like her. She was a smart girl that one and I totally loved her! Another highlight for me in character-wise was the relationship that Calder and Lily shared which was a strange one at thtat and may have happened a little too fast for my liking. However, on a whole, I still loved reading about the struggles Calder was facing when it came to Lily alone. After all, he desperately wants to kill Lily's father to revenge his and his sister's mother's death, but there was still just . . . Lily - the girl he was opening his cold heart to. And, as this new relationship begins to blossom, unfold and become something of the unexpected, everything from love to the storyline to the damn-right surprising ending it offered us . . . everything about this book, LIES BENEATH, was everything I was looking for in a mermaid tale and about time too! It was SO twisted but in the best possible way!

Overall, LIES BENEATH was such an engaging YA debut novel coming from a very talented and a very entertaining author, Anne Greenwood Brown. The whole mystery surrounding a debt of a mermaid is something every mermaid fan must read this year and I'm definitely looking forward to reading the upcoming sequel which is slated for sometime next year, one that will feature Lily's POV this time round so I'm very excited for that!

The Rating

4 1/2 / 5 stars