DEEP BETRAYAL

Diving back into the stagnant, tepid waters of Lies Beneath (2012), Lily Anne Hancock and Calder White return to Lake Superior, where Lily first discovered Calder was a merman and that his adoptive sisters were bent on the destruction of the Hancock family.

With one of the sisters dead, Lily and Calder tell Lily’s father he is the true sibling of the merpeople and gradually introduce him to life underwater—just as bodies start washing up on the lakeshore. Lily knows that mercreatures hunt, but her father knows what being human is and doesn’t need to feed on human emotions, does he? Switching the narration from fishy Calder to a love-struck, half-fish teen girl doesn’t enliven the emotional dullness that marked the first work. Brown does attempt to link back to the Native American legends halfheartedly explored earlier, with little success. There’s very little by way of plot, despite piles of bodies and many red herrings. Lily and Calder’s romance continues to be defined by his controlling and obsessive behavior, while Lily experiments with her mutant abilities to fit into Calder’s watery world.

This is the same bait as the last novel, but it’s been left in the sun even longer.