Forget Me Not, My Dear

Expected Publication: March 12th, 2013

Deep Betrayal (Lies Beneath # 2)

By: Anne Greenwood Brown

Random House/Delacorte

ISBN-13: 9780385742030

Once you dive into Deep Betrayal, the sequel to Lies Beneath,you won't come up for air!
It's been thirty days, two hours, and seventeen minutes since Calder left Lily standing on the shores of Lake Superior. Not that she's counting. And when Calder does return, it's not quite the reunion Lily hoped for. Especially after she lets her father in on a huge secret: he, like Calder, is a merman. Obsessed with his new identity, Lily's dad monopolizes Calder's time as the two of them spend every day in the water, leaving Lily behind.

Then dead bodies start washing ashore. Calder blames his mermaid sisters, but Lily fears her father has embraced the merman's natural need to kill. As the body count grows, everyone is pointing fingers. Lily doesn't know what to believe—only that whoever's responsible is sure to strike again. . . .

Review

     Lily Hancock has spent the last thirty days exiled from home, sent away to live with her best friend Lori in her old town.  All because her Dad wants her kept away from Calder, the boy she loves, and Lake Superior's depths - both of which hold dark secrets beyond his comprehension.  It has been thirty days since Lily saw Jack Petitt kill Tallulah, one of Calder's sisters and now his tainted family believes that revenge has been served - and Lily is dead, having taken her Dad's place as a sacrifice.  Then the body resurfaces and Lily returns to Superior, deciding to tell her Dad the truth - that he's half merman.  In the process the sisters discover Lily's presence and bodies begin to turn up again, with everything pointing to them being the killers. But is it really that simple?  It's up to Lily and Calder to investigate the murders and stop whoever is responsible, family or not.  With her burgeoning mermaid traits and the possibility of a mermaid creationist legend being true, things are about to get interesting.  Will they be able to fix the situation before a vengeful Jack exposes the existence of mermaids to the world?  I went into this one expecting it to be something I wouldn't get very into.  I was okay with the first one, which had a good premise but the follow-through less than impressed me.  So color me surprised when I sat down and got a third of the way through in my first sitting!  

     I liked the switch from Calder's narration, over to Lily's.  She was a lot easier to sympathize with and I enjoyed seeing her perspective.  It really fleshed her out as a character and gave me a motivation for her actions.  Not to say she was perfect.  Lily is a hothead, who does things on her own terms without always thinking about it rationally first.  But she's an individual which made her dumb decisions easier to read about.  The inclusion of a possible sea monster/creature of legend was interesting, but I felt like Brown waited until too late in the narrative for that plot twist to have a full effect on the readers.  The identity of the murderer was not at all surprising to me and I was bored by that mystery frankly.  I would have liked a more interesting resolution.  The family issues with Lily's parents and her Dad training to live with his Merman heritage was basically background noise.  The only thing Lily is fixated on in all intensity is Calder and being with him romantically.  Calder's sisters played practically no part in this one.  Including them as a threat hanging over everyone's heads was effective at first, but lost the thrill when they were shown to be starving and pretty much unable to care about revenge anymore.  The ending was okay, but not the best ever.  It did fit in with the rest of the novel though.  I hope the author leaves it at two books and doesn't feel the need to go further than that.  Overall, better than the first book in the series and worth the follow up to see what happens to the characters.

VERDICT:  3.5/5  Stars

*I received an Advanced Reading E-book Copy from the publisher, via NetGalley. No money or favors were exchanged for this review. This book's expected publication date is March 12th, 2013.*