Once Upon a Bookshelf

The Story

From the cover flap:

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 must prey on humans and absorb their positive energy. Usually, they select their victims at random, but this time around, the underwater clan chooses its target for a reason: revenge. They want to kill Jason Hancock, the man they blame for their mother’s death.

It’s going to take a concerted effort to lure the aquaphobic Hancock onto the water. Calder’s job is to gain Hancock’s trust by getting close to his family. Relying on his irresistible good looks and charm, Calder sets out to seduce Hancock’s daughter Lily. Easy enough, but Calder screws everything up by falling in love – just as Lily starts to suspect there’s more to the monster-in-the-lake legends than she ever imagined, and just as the mermaids threaten to take matters into their own hands, forcing Calder to choose between them and the girl he loves.

One thing’s for sure: whatever Calder decides, the outcome won’t be pretty.

The Response

I knew there was a reason I don’t like swimming in the Great Lakes. It has nothing to do with the temperature. It’s all about the murderous mermaids who live there!

I haven’t read any other books about mermaids. I know there are a whole bunch of novels out right now where mermaids play a large part, but I can’t say how this compares to them. What I can say is that this was both fresh and new to me, and I LIKED it. I will both be exploring more books about mermaids, and more books by this author. (Which is a good thing, seeing as this is the first in a trilogy.)

Calder, I fear, borders a little on the side of dangerous. I mean, obviously his character is dangerous. Murdering mermaid, eep. But… there’s also the whole he-doesn’t-want-his-girl-to-talk-to-anyone-else thing, the fact that he’s bad news for her (whether he wants to be or not), and he could murder this girl if ever he lusted over her emotions too much… I know there are a lot of women who go for that sort of man in their fiction (hello, Edward Cullen), but I have been over that for a while, so he really didn’t do anything for me.

That said, there was plenty of other enjoyable things about this novel. For example, I really enjoyed how the author has played with the family dynamics between Calder and his three sisters. At times you wonder if it’s love between them, but at other times it just seems so much darker than love. The manipulation and obsession between them is one of the best things that we are able to explore in this book… to see how far one would go to deprive the other of what they want most. It was rather fascinating.

Even though Calder didn’t do much for me, it was a nice change to read a book where the protagonist is a male. I do love me my kick-ass female leads, but every once in a while you need a change, and this was the perfect choice for that.

The Bottom Line

Highly enjoyed. I’m definitely looking forward to reading the rest of this trilogy.