Lies Beneath

by Anne Greenwood Brown

Lies Beneath Series, Book One

Book Description

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.

MY THOUGHTS: 2 OF 5 FLEURS DE LIS

I’m not gonna bother with my usual 2 paragraph summary before I get into my review. This book only got 2 stars because I only give my DNF’s a 1 star rating.

Calder has to get close to Lily so he and his sisters can kill her dad, but of COURSE he falls in lurve with her instead. Why makes her have questionable taste, to say the least. Calder is a grade-A stalker. Within about a week of meeting her, he’s randomly shown up at places where she is, starts working at the same place he knows she wants to work, and oh yeah, GETS CAUGHT LURKING IN THE WOODS OUTSIDE HER HOUSE AT NIGHT. Yes, I would sooooo be all over the dude that did these things to me.

Lily is one of the most clueless girls I’ve ever encountered in a book. Calder TELLS her how much of a monster mer-dudes are, and that basically he wants to eat her aura. It kinda went like this:

Lily: So, I saw this big dolphin-ish thing in the water…was that you?
Calder, panicked: Whaaaa???? Noooooooo….
Lily: [READING VICTORIAN POETRY ABOUT MER-PEOPLE]
Calder: OMG you totally got me. I wasn’t gonna tell you but yes I am a mermaid…er, mer-dude. That poetry dragged it out of me. Oh BTW, me and my sisters eat people’s auras and also kill people for fun!
Lily: But….you’re not like your sisters, are you Calder?
Calder: You DID just hear me, right?

I also don’t know why Calder fell in love with a teenaged hipster who wears lots of velvet and apparently wishes she were born in 1871.

Another big thing that bothered me though, was there is a whooooolle lot of incestuous content for a book that is marketed to teens.

This book was painful to finish, but I did get a good surprise at the end, even though it left me more confused than ever. I won’t be reading the next books in this series.

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*I reviewed this book courtesy of NetGalley and Random House.