Lies Beneath

Title: Lies Beneath (#1)
Author: Anne Greenwood Brown

Pub: 2012; Delacorte Books for Young Readers
Pages: 303
Etc: <3 Netgalley


Didn't it seem like last summer there were a plethora of mermaid books hitting the young adult market? I figured they were just trying to be the next Big Thing since the paranormal genre tends to be monopolized by vamps or zombies.  Part of me, out of plain curiosity, wanted to check out the finned friends to see what was going on.  Another part was fairly disinterested.

I finally caved when I saw the cover for Lies Beneath and here's a couple of noteworthy things I found out:

First, when **I** think of mermaids, I picture:

Mermaids are suppose to be sweet, gentle, beautiful, and have an amazing voice.  Instead in Lies Beneath their mermaids are more like:

Oh yeah, pretty eeevilll.  The mermaids are absolute vixens.  AND there's three of them who have a brother, Calder, who desperately wants to GET AWAY from them.  Or at least not have to be with them, which I guess is part of their rules.  But Calder can't do that until he joins his sisters and seek revenge on the Hancock family.  Mainly killing one of them off since the grandfather is the reason why their mom died. 

Of course there's gonna be some lurve.  Calder meets Lily Hancock and even though merman aren't really suppose to get serious with humans, it happens.  And let the family drama begin.

Overall there were a handful of thumbs-ups for Lies Beneath.  I dug that the narrator was male AND a merman.  Also, clever-clever to create such manipulative creatures.   Sure, sure, I get that sirens are mermaid kin but I wasn't expecting them to be that callous and manipulative.  In an interview, Brown refers to the mermaids preying on humans as their form of popping anti-depressants.  I loved that reason.

So yeah, oh GoodReads I gave Lies Beneath two stars, but I'd actually up it to two and a half.