Title: Lies Beneath
Average Customer Review:
Number of Comments: 2 Rating(s)   2 Review(s)

LIES BENEATH BY ANNE GREENWOOD BROWN (LIES BENEATH #1)

July 17, 2012
Reviewer:

This is the first book I read about mermaids or merpeople. And I must say I kinda love it. Lies Beanth is an interested and entertaining read.

The mood through the entire book is dark. The lake, the cold water and the quest for revenge helps to build it. The description of the scenery is well written and I must say, water monster waiting to snatch you and drown you or not, I’d like to visit the place.

These mermaids aren’t like your Disney stories. They’re evil. More animal than human and beautiful enough to lead you to a death trap willingly. But not all is wicked fun for them. They can’t be too long out of the water or without killing someone, they can’t break promises and they’re link to their families by a psych-bond (not something I’d like, thank you)

Calder is the only male in his family, with his older sister on the lead. They’re bound together and he can’t be free of them or help the need to go back to Lake Superior for the summer every year. His instincts force him to go back as well as to look for people to draw emotion from. Merpeople need happy emotions to keep their own dark feelings at bay and maintain their sanity. But Calder is different from his sisters, he wasn’t born a merman and there’s still a large part of him that holds to his humanity.
Calder’s POV was something interesting. Through the book fights between his quest for revenge on the man guilty of his mother death, the longing for a real family, his need to consume human emotions and his newly found feelings for Lily.

Lily was a harder character to get to know, mainly because Calder can’t understand her at all. She keeps a lot of what’s going on in her mind to herself. She likes poetry and dresses as a Victorian poet (Weird even for my standards) and most of all she senses there’s something wrong with Calder. This is something I enjoyed a lot about her: Calder creeps her our – considering the guy is stalking her, she has a right – and she lets him know.

Calder’s sisters were something else. Maris, Tallulah (I just love that name) and Pavati are envious, evil creatures. The three and intent on getting their revenge and you get to see some personal aspects of them. Maris is the oldest and most evil, bordering on psycho yet I can’t help but like her. From the merpeople POV you can understand her nature of hunter. Pavati is probably somewhere between both of her sisters. She likes to “play with her food” but as a born mermaid can’t really understand Calder’s feeling and conflicts. She goes along with her nature but isn’t a soulless creature. Talullah is the closest to Calder and the one who probably is more like him.

The three add a lot to the book and the story.

Some things in the ending felt rushed, I’d have like to see some parts more developed and better laid out in the book but all in all Lies Beneath is an excellent book that put Merpeople in my radar of reading.

The Next book in the series will be in Lily’s POV and honestly I can’t wait to see what goes on inside her head or what will happen next under the surface of Lake Superior.