Anne Greenwood Brown

Finally! A mermaid tail (sorry, couldn't resist a bit of fin, I mean fun) tale that I can finally, actually say I enjoyed reading; one that I didn't hate the main characters, or their romance, or even the mythology behind the sea creatures. Lies Beneath is a success in a genre that has so fat yet to offer many noteworthy titles; this is thanks in part to presence of, as the great Wendy Darling of GoodReads so aptly put it: eeeeevil mermaids. Not the Disneyfied version most common on film and show more in YA novels (Between the Sea and Sky, I am looking at you) but the twisted, covetous, murderous sirens of Greek mythology. These sirens mermaids have bite; the three females (dominat matriarch Maris, affectionate Tallulah, flawless Pavati) especially typify the kind of mermaid I apparently like to read: vengeful, deliberate and deadly. Lies Beneath also is one of the few all-male POV young-adult novels I've read - unexpected, and very welcome when I realized it.

Calder (have you even seen a caldera? Hmmm....) White is both a creeper and, oxymoronically but believably, a good guy. What's nice about Calder, and reading from his view, is that he's a very self-aware creeper. He doesn't misrepresent his actions (breaking and entering, stalking, etc.) as romance or love, but readily admits his actions are more in line with a "serial killer" than a boyfriend. I liked Calder from the start: his is a strong and distinguished voice from the outset, with just a touch of that self-deprecating humor that I always enjoy. He's obviously and clearly different from his sisters: winter migrations, self-denial disguised as self-control, desire for isolation. The title itself is also doubly clever when viewed in reference to the male lead character: not only does a monster lie beneath the waters of the placid looking lake, but there are lies beneath his motivations that even he is unaware of. Figuring out Calder's personal history is a recurring subplot throughout, that though it doesn't have the high dramatics of the 'kill Jason Hancock' main plot, has more than enough punch at the end.

Lily was sadly a weaker effort than her love interest for much of the novel. She found her footing before the end, but on the whole my love for this book is based on Calder, not Lily. I found her wardrobe choices a bit try-hard and the love for Victorian mermaid-espousing poets was a little bit of a reach but I was won over. I was won over and I know the exact moment - it wasn't when Lily slapped Calder's hand for trying to 'hook her hair behind her ear' though I did love it, it wasn't when she was smart and suspicious of the boy she catches following her everywhere she goes - it was when she used a bad Russian accent. Everyone has a bad Russian accent, everyone I hang out with, at least. That was when she stopped being a character and became real. It was also refreshing to read a family with a strong and loving dynamic, one that actually seemed to love each other (the only other recent read I can recall that did the same was The Alchemy of Forever), though that served its purpose as well. Lily's family represents a lot of what Calder lost in his 54( if I mathed that right) 18 years of life: family, love, security, normalcy.

Back to the sisters three most vengeful: Maris, intimidating if somewhat mystifying by the end, Pavati, whose name I read as 'Parvati' nine times before I realized my mistake, and the only-kind-by-comparison Tallulah. (Thematically-relevant/appropriate names? Nice touch, Greenwood Brown.) Their individual characterization is severely lacking, but as a force they are impressive. Even the number of them (school of them? shoal of them? swarm?), three, is reinforced by the Greek legends they pay clear homage to; the most accepted number in tales is between two and five. The girls are born mermaids, as Calder is not. They prey on humans, though not for flesh or for ships as the ancient version did, but for the victim's emotions. They are, as Calder claims to ignorant ears, monsters, not the typical Disney princesses I've come to read and cringe about. Here, in their motivation and craving for human feeling as well as the creation of 'reinvigorated' (made, not born) mermaids, is where Brown diverges from traditional reasoning and branches out into her own version of motives for the watermonsters.To her creative credit, it is both a logical and elegantly simple answer. But first, in order to show why I thought this so great, allow me to wander a moment. This next paragraph may wax slightly spoilery, so avoid if you don't want minor details before reading.

I read a lot of vampire novels; they're heavily published and a lot of my friends, both online and off, read them as well. They seem to be dropping off in favor of dystopias/post-apocalyptic (or have just adapted, like Darwin predicted) but for a few years there, they were ubiquitous. So either in solidarity (Morganville series) or out of masochistic curiosity (Twilight series), I've more than read my fair share of the genre full of bloodsuckers. Some of those books went out their way to fashion a coherent/unique reason for why the vampires needed blood; others...did not. I enjoyed one type of these books more than the other. For example, one novel postulated that vampires need the oxygen present in living humans blood to keep their bodies/cells alive 'after death'. (I don't remember what book this was, but even if it was Twilight, love the concept, hate the execution. But I doubt it was). It was original, it was clever, and it has stuck with long after the book itself was lost. (Someone remind me? Or someone with more powerful Google Fu than I can figure it out?) Anne Greenwood Brown has done something similar with her mermaids: they cannot manufacture their own positive emotions, so they covet and murder and plot to absorb ours/our aura in water. Emotions like joy, hope, excitement, love are more than just sustenance; they're what keep the mermaid/man from falling into an endless depression, and eventually, insanity and death. Clever, right? Without delving into consumption of humans themselves. Random side-note: These Lake Superior merpeople are also apparently somewhat part eel - all four in Calder's 'family' have some electrical abilities both in and out of water that are referred to as 'eel-like' or similar. Major personal kudos for the author and her clever adaptions to the mythic creatures - these are definitely her own version.

Lies Beneath is good, just too short. This is convoluted. This is original and fun and easy to read. It's a fast-paced novel where events happen quickly so this far from a boring read, ever. The conflicts in Calder's life - family versus freedom, nature versus nurture, choice versus requirement, revenge or forgiveness - are all executed so well. His emotional pull between personal happiness and a desire to set something right is never melodramatic. There is a sequel, Water Lily, set for a 2013 release and from Lily's view. All I know is my next mermaid read, Of Poseidon, has a lot to live up to. Also, lastly, superficially: how AWESOME and creepy is that cover with the touch of bloodred? So appropriate and foreboding. Dun dun duuuun. Read this one, guys. show less

Lies Beneath is not the Disney mermaid tale that you might have been expecting. Calder and his mermaid sisters are vicious killing machines intent on taking revenge out on Jason Hancock. I loved that Greenwood Brown did not soften this aspect of Calder's character and that is where the strength of this story is. Calder begins as an unapologetic killer. He believes that his way of life is just a that, a way of life. Yet, there is a part of him that realizes that his life could have been show more entirely different, and that he could have been normal. It's this part of him that makes him a character the reader can like. As the story progresses, Calder becomes less sure of the brutal life he and his sisters lead, and this builds a new dimension to his character, making him into one that the reader can actually cheer for.

Lily was a frustrating character for me. She started off really strong, distrustful of Calder, suspicious of who he was and what his intentions were. I really liked that she wasn't falling all over him just because of his looks. But midway through she became Twilight's Bella, convinced that despite what Calder had done in the past, what he was, and what he told her his intentions were, that he would never hurt her. It was just too much for me, and I was glad that I didn't need to read things from her perspective.

Despite Lily's about face in character, I really enjoyed the story and am finally being forced to realize that I do like reading from a male's point of view. I am definitely looking forward to reading more of this series. show less

Review courtesy of All Things Urban Fantasy:
http://allthingsuf.com/2012/06/lies-beneath-by-anne-greenwood-brown.html

My feelings for this book are a surprise and a delight. Despite a male protagonist, despite his murderous family and ill-intent, LIES BENEATH won me over as deeply and as surely as Calder seduced his way into Lily Hancock’s life. Brown’s world building is utterly magical, I never expected that she could intertwine mermaids with the modern world. She does just that, without show more sacrificing one iota of their cold, inhuman mythology.

To remain true to that pedigree, however, Brown had to add something new to the mix. Though Calder and his sisters start out bent on revenge, but book’s end many assumptions have been turned on their head. Some of these last minute twists were a bit bumpy (the absolute truth behind Jason Hancock’s sin being one of them), but these momentary hitches didn’t derail the evocative image of Calder and his sister, slick and disingenuous, preying upon the vacationers of the coast. From sand under the seats of a stolen car to their disdain for clothes, this school of teenage mermaids was sick and fascinating. This air of danger made Calder’s allure all the more seductive, and I was on the edge of my seat as Lily alternately distrusted and fell for him.

In the end, Brown brought love to the murderous mermaids… or as much as she could without betraying the nature of her characters. Calder is a beautifully seductive anti-hero, and as much as I fell for him I don’t know that he was redeemed so much as forgiven. The image of him pouring his heart out to a shipwreck frozen in time will haunt me, as well as the painful truth of his ever after. Calder’s origins added a unique twist to his character but I am eager to see if any of his bloodthirsty sisters have similar growth potential inside.

Sexual Content: Kissing, references to sex. show less

Calder White was perfectly happy in a nice warm climate when his sisters called him back to the icy waters of Lake Superior. Being a merman, ignoring this call is impossible. He is bound to his sisters and reluctantly returns to them as slow as possible. When he gets there, he is offered the opportunity to be released from his bond if he helps them murder the son of the man responsible for their mother's death named Jason Hancock. Calder agrees and plans to use his good looks and hypnotic show more merman suggestion power to manipulate one of his daughter, but things don't go as planned. He didn't think he would fall in love. Torn between being free from his family and wanting to be with his new human love, Calder doesn't know what to do.

I had high hopes for Lies Beneath even though I wasn't crazy about the cover. Mermaids are one of my favorite mythical creatures, but these aren't really mermaids. They are basically aquatic vampires, which takes away everything that makes these creatures interesting. Vampires have overflooded the YA book market and I was looking for something different. These mermaids prey on people and feed on their positive energy and emotion because they can't produce them themselves. They can also communicate with each other telepathically, manipulate humans with their beauty and hypnotic powers, and produce electricity similar to eels. This would have been interesting if it didn't make the relationship between Calder and Lily into a carbon copy of Twilight. He wants to eat her but he's in love with her and it's going against his nature...blah blah blah. I have seen this so many times before that it's ridiculous. Plus his stalker status rivals Edward's in Twilight and he kills people regularly to survive. It got really creepy. The murder aspect seemed to be justified by the fact the he doesn't kill anyone during the course of the book, but that doesn't make his past murders disappear. The romance did not wow me because it was the typical instalove with no development at all.

The characters are fairly flat and uninteresting. Lily is a rebellious girl who wears weird clothes and doesn't mind that her boyfriend has killed people in the past. His sisters are the most interesting characters in the novel, but we don't get to see much of them. All the characters could have done with richer backgrounds and dimensions. The two things that did work for me are the writing and the poetry in the novel. Despite not being very invested in the characters or the plot, I kept reading because the writing really moved and kept me interested. I am a huge sucker for classic literature cited in books. I get to discover new things I didn't know about or nerd out over things I like. I had no idea about some of these poems and it was nice to discover them.

Lies Beneath is a mediocre teen novel that had a lot of promise with the dark mermaids, but it turned into a Twilight rip off. The ending is definitely open for a sequel and I'm frankly not interested in reading it. Hopefully some of the other mermaid books will be less disappointing. show less