Review: Promise Bound by Anne Greenwood Brown

Title: Promise Bound

Author: Anne Greenwood Brown

Series: Lies Beneath #3

Genre: Urban Fantasy/YA Romance/Mythology

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Publication Date: January 7th, 2014

Edition: Hardcover, 368 pages

Source: Purchased

Purchase: Amazon US | Kobo | B&N | Book Depository | iBooks | BAM

Synopsis:

     Calder and Lily never imagined falling in love would mean breaking apart. But ever since Lily started wearing a glass pendant that once belonged to Nadia, Calder's adoptive mother, she's been having vivid dreams of what life was like for the mermaid matriarch. In fact, she's been dreaming as if she were Nadia! And Nadia, it seems, made a promise before her death. A promise to reunite Calder's biological mother with her son. Lily knows merfolk are bound to keep their promises. Calder's not buying into it, though. He chalks up the dreams to stress. He wants Lily to focus on the future—their future, not the past. Which forces Lily to send Calder away. Calder goes, feeling rejected and more than a little tempted to revert to his hunting ways.  

     What both of them overlook is the present: Calder's sisters, Maris and Pavati, are fighting for control of the mermaid clan, and now that Lily and her dad have transformed into mer-creatures, both mermaids vie for daughter and father as allies. Which of the two mermaids can be trusted? Will Lily make costly mistakes, forcing her to descend to the depths of Lake Superior? And if Calder returns, will he be the same merman Lily grew to love? The stakes are high, with many lives at risk, but Calder and Lily must confront the past as well as their darkest impulses if they want a chance at being together.

   So, this is the final book in the Lies Beneath trilogy. This was one of those series that has left me on the fence about how I feel about it. It was a very entertaining series, and I really like that the mermaids were less Disney and closer to how the mythology portrays them. That being said, the problem is that about half the characters are fairly boring. Both main characters, Lily, and Calder, were fine in the first book and I still liked them in the second book, but in this book, they both got on my nerves multiple times.

   Lily was really self-righteous, and Calder was just a whiny pain in the ass. Then there was Sophie who was a little selfish, Maris and Pavati both manipulating Lily and her family to betray the other. There was a lot of drama that didn't really seem to have an end goal other than there being drama in each book. 

   Each book did have a consistent story arch, but the trilogy as a whole not so much. The last third of this book was kind of all over the place. There were POV chapters from characters that barely had any page time or were very clearly side characters in the rest of the trilogy. I didn't understand why there were chapters from their pov at the end of the book when they were hardly in the rest of the book/series before.

   I am glad I finished the trilogy, I just wish there was a little bit more closure with some of the storylines. Storylines that were portrayed as being very important and then were left very open and unanswered by the end of this book.