Thursday, June 14, 2012

Review: Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown

Page count: 303
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Release date: June 12th, 2012
Book: Advanced copy- ebook.
Who I'd Recommend it To: Fans of the fantasy/romance genre. Fans of Twilight and Shiver, in particular.
Rating: ★★★1/2

Synopsis on goodreads:

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.



Review:

(Warning: May contain slight spoilers!)

When I think mermaids, the first thing that comes to mind is Disney's Ariel. The mermaids in this book, however, were the total opposite of that--to say the least. Boy, are these mermaids evil.

This is the first mermaid novel I've read ever so I was pretty excited to start it. It was interesting to see another side of mermaids--the kind that have deadly intentions and kill people for the energy that comes from human emotions.  So.. let's get started with this review, shall we?

What I liked about this novel:

  • It was unique! As I said, I've never read anything like it. You could tell the author hadn't recycled her ideas off of other books.
  • The writing style! It was descriptive and definitely made me feel like I was there. It was also written in a male's POV, which I was definitely not expecting. And unlike a lot of other YA books with male protagonists, this one was actually believable. I believed that this was a guy narrating. I've read too many books where the male POV still sounds like a girls'.
  • The relationship between Calder and his sisters. I loved it. The sisters all had distinct personalities and I loved the conflict between them all. I especially loved the contrast between Calder and his sisters. The sisters (except maybe one of them) had absolutely no values, no regard for human life, no remorse, while Calder was human, in a way.
  • The darkness of the book. It was disturbing, and it was terrifying.
  • Calder was weird and creepy (even though he really didn't know he was being weird and creepy most of the time) and Lily was pretty much all like: "Dude, I know you saved my life and all but you're totally creepy and stalkerish so I'm just going to go now." YAY FOR CHARACTERS WITH BRAINS!

What I didn't like:
  • Sometimes the dialogue seemed a bit unrealistic.
  • Majority of the secondary characters were bland and had no real personalities whatsoever.
  • Lily wasn't the least bit freaked out when Calder was all: "I'm a merman!" I mean, dude, come on.

Also, I have no idea why but half of the time I imagined Calder's sisters to look like this while they were underwater?


I don't know about you guys, but this just screams Maris to me. Ugh, most be my Post Potter Depression playing up again.


Anyways, overall this book was fantastic, though it had it's faults. It was beautiful and dark, the prose was fantastic and I loved the main characters and their love story! I'll definitely be reading the next installment in the series and I hope to see more of the sisters!

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