Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown

Submitted by Lucas, teen reviewer:

Overall, I liked the book Lies Beneath. While I would not say that the book was amazing, it was well worth the read.  The basic plot is that a merman and his mermaid sisters go to try and avenge their mother's death by killing this guy called Hancock. Their plan is to try and have the main character (named Calder) seduce one of Hancock's daughters so that Calder can get close to Hancock and lure him out into the water where the merpeople can drown Hancock. Of course, the majority of the plot is Calder trying to seduce the daughter and eventually falling in love with her.

As you can probably guess from the fact that these merfolk are trying to kill someone, these aren't the happy, helpful Disney merfolk. These are cold-blooded murderers who crave positive emotion, as they can't produce it themselves. To get their fix, they kill humans and absorb their happiness and joy. The main character seems to be the only merperson who is not completely OK with this setup.

This book sort of reminded me of Twilight without the sickening loads of romance told from the perspective of Edward. Also, Edward's family is evil and trying to get Edward to kill Bella's father.

Action wise, this book isn't great. The main (the only, really) source of conflict in the book is that Calder eventually falls in love with Lily and has to decide between his love for her and his loyalty to his family. On top of all of this, Lily is beginning to figure out Calder's secret.

In conclusion, I would recommend Lies Beneath to any slightly morbid Twilight lover who thought that Twilight was too romantic.  I also think that those who like a lot of emotional tension and internal conflict would like this book.  Lastly, those who don't really care what they read as long as it has a good writing style, deep characters, and a fairly engaging plot (I say fairly engaging because it is kind of slow until the end) would definitely like this book.  For people who like a lot of action and adventure in their books, though, stay away!

Lies Beneath will be released on June 12th, 2012.