Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown

title: Lies Beneath
written by: Anne Greenwood Brown
series: Lies Beneath #1
genres: Young Adult, Paranormal Romance, merfolks
pages: 303
publisher: Delacorte books for Young Readers
publication date: June 12th, 2012

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.

First of all, what a beautiful cover!! Secondly, Lies Beneath was my first book about mermaids ever, so I had no idea what to expect. I have never given much attention to mermaids, the only mermaid thing I have ever seen on TV in Disney's the Little Mermaid and the movie Aquamerine. I was expecting all mermaids to be like Ariel, all nice and friendly and girly, but only after reading the first chapters I was sure I was 100% wrong about them. They were badass killer mermaids!

Right after opening this book I was sucked into the story, told from Calder's -a merman- point of view. Calder was a great character, although he reminded me of Edward from the Twilight Saga at some parts of the book. The only thing he does is lying, not because he wants to, but for his sisters, who are definitely more kick-ass than he is. I absolutly love the whole woman on top thing :) Maris is the kind of annoying, but also the most dangerous of the mermaids. She wants to avenge her mother's death, and is prepared to do everything for that. Then there is the sweet one of the 3 sisters, Tallulah, and to me she seemed a porcelain doll, breakable but extremely beautiful.

The plot of this stories was very original. Killer mermaids, teenage romance, family drama, the whole package! Some passages made me smile, others made me sad. But at the end some of them just made no sense, and even annoyed me. I can't say much about it without spoiling, so I won't... But I was not very happy about it. 

Anne Greenwood Brown's writing style is not very special, but pleasant to read. It was not extremely hard, so I didn't have to pick up a dictionary every minute, and it had little pieces of poetry in it. I really love poetry, although I am really bad at understanding it... Furthermore, it was written from a single POV, which I really liked. Most of the books I read are written from multiple points of view, which sometimes confuses me. 

I give 3.5 stars to Lies Beneath, a very original YA romance with something for everyone, which I would recommend especially to people who have already read some other mermaid books and are looking for another gread mermaid book.

Love, Mar

*A review copy was provided by the publisher in exchange for a honest review. This was done via Netgalley, an organization that connects readers with publishers and distrubutes eGalleys. I did not recieve any money or other payment for this review.*