Staff review: Lies Beneath

Meh.

That's about all I can muster for the new teen-mermaid-love story-Twilight-wanna be titled Lies Beneath by Anne Greenwood Brown.  But that's not a very compelling review so let me back up a bit.

I was very excited when I read the description for this book, which begins with:

"As the only brother in a family of mermaids living in Lake Superior..."

Lake Superior!  These are local mermaids, not some flashy Los Angeles or New York mermaids but good decent Great Lakes mermaids.  I was so hopeful that maybe the book would be set in Sault Ste. Marie or a picturesque upper peninsula town that I couldn't wait to read the book.  So I was disappointed when I realized that the mermaids home base was Wisconsin, specifically the Apostle Islands, but hey, at least they weren't swimming around in the Hudson River, right? 

I kept reading but the book just never took off.  The romance between the lead merman and the young heroine didn't really spark and the mermaid world painted by the author never seemed very rich or engrossing.  I did like that the protagonist was a guy, but it wasn't enough to make me really like the book.  Maybe it is just me but I don't find the concept of mermaids all that sexy.  Just kind of wet and clammy and covered in dried sand...ew.

I know mermaids are supposed to be the new vampires (see this and this) but maybe the prediction made by USA Today back in May 2011 was wrong.  Maybe we're not yet done with vampires or werewolves - after all, Tallulah Rising, the sequel to Glen Duncan's The Last Werewolf just came out, and so far the reviews are very good.  Or maybe the next big thing in paranormal lit will be zombies.  I wouldn't have thought it possible but there are zombie love stories - Isaac Marion's Warm Bodies is one that I am eager to read.

Or maybe I just read the wrong mermaid book.  After all, I thought Splash was quite funny so I'm not completely anti-mermaid.

Below is a list of some other mermaid fiction that might be better than Lies Beneath.  And if you still want to try it, we have copies of Lies beneath in print and ebook.