Lies BeneathAnne Greenwood Brown
Exp. Pub. Date: June 12, 2012
Synopsis: 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.
Unpaid supernatural debt. Bitter, murderous children itching for a mother's revenge. Merman point of view. Gorgeous cover. Sounds like a winner right? Sadly, Lies Beneath doesn't win the desirable 'Homecoming Queen' and will probably only be remembered as 'Also Ran.' First off, I'm not quite sure why there's a mermaid on the cover since our main character is male. Want to stand out? Give us a drool-worthy merman underwater that's totally unique in today's market and will really grab the attention of gals as they walk past the shelves at B&N.
I really wanted to like this one. The premise sounded so intriguing. I will say that I did like to see the way the sister mermaids had zero scruples over taking victims to the bottom of Lake Superior to drown them and we even get to see that through Calder's eyes. Calder himself was not born a merman, but made one by their mother. How? I'll let you read to learn that. So Calder's desire to kill and absorb happy emotions mermaids naturally lacked wasn't as strong as his true sisters. He begins to develop a conscience and often challenges himself to go long periods of time without taking a life. So when the time comes to woo Lily to develop a close relationship with her dad, it's not surprising that he begins to feel guilty about setting him up for murder. Unfortunately, most of this novel was Calder trying to get to know Lily and I found myself pretty bored with the conversations. I couldn't figure out why Lily liked him back. She had doubts from the beginning and sensed something wasn't right with him, her new friends didn't recognize him and questioned him constantly, she thinks he intentionally pushed her off a cliff and took his sweet time trying to save her, he stalks her by taking a job at the same cafe, and she catches him numerous times swimming in the water beside her lakeside home in the middle of the night. Would you fall for a guy like that? Not freakin' likely, so it makes this paranormal romance hard to swallow and I ended up choking on water.
Read it if you want but it's doubtful you'll read it twice.
ARC provided by publisher via NetGalley.
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