Review--Promise Bound by Anne Greenwood Brown

Calder and Lily never imagined falling in love would mean breaking apart. But ever since Lily started wearing a 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, who seems to have some unfinished business for Lily to complete. Calder's not buying it; he chalks up Lily's dreams to stress. He wants Lily to focus on the future--their future--not the past. 

What both Lily and Calder overlook is the present, where Calder's mermaid sisters are fighting for control of their clan and for Lily's and her dad's allegiance. But which mermaid can be trusted? And as Lily and Calder quarrel, will Calder revert to the dark side of his merman impulses? Will Lily herself be seduced by the pull of the siren's sinister desires? The stakes are high--with many lives in peril--as Calder and Lily confront hard truths that threaten any chance of their getting back together.

Set on the Lake Superior, Promise Bound is the gripping, water-churning finale to the series that began with Lies Beneath and Deep Betrayal.

It's always hard to return to a world you haven't visited in awhile, especially one where you read the last book as an ARC. Anne Greenwood Brown's Promise Bound is the final book in the Lies Beneath series that brings us the mermaids of old. The kind that liked to lure sailors to their watery deaths. I've always enjoyed Anne's spin on mermaids, they're not all the singing princess longing for land--although she was great too!

My memory from Deep Betrayal is pretty much nonexistent. The most I could recall was Lily turning mermaid towards the end while in the meantime Calder was helping her father adjust to his new merman state. So yeah, there are a LOT of details I couldn't recollect. Which is always hard for me as a reader, because I tend to struggle to remember instead of just enjoying the story. We do get some threads of recap, but I was still left trying to remember.

Anyway, after reading the description, you can bet I was fearful for our teenaged couple. I am sucker for happy endings and when I read that trouble would pull them apart, I wasn't prepared for it even as I saw the signs of it happening. Lily is not the same. She's changed. She's been having dreams about Nadia--Calder's mermaid adoptive mother. She has unfinished business and needs Lily to help put it into action. Calder is to find his birth parents, as Nadia made a promise long ago to his birth mother that she'd return Calder to her one day.

Lily accepts this and forces Calder to go on this insane mission. He promises her and it's a promise he must fulfill if he ever wants to see Lily and be with her again.

But there's still more trouble on the home-front. Lily's mother continues to fail in health, her sister wants to be a mermaid so badly that she's going to extreme lengths, Daniel is forced to raise the baby he had with Pavati, and Lily's friend Gabby is starting to get ideas about mermaids and wanting to find them to find the answers to what happened to her brother Jack and then there's both Pavati and Maris trying to get Lily and her father to join them in overthrowing the other in a family power struggle. So a lot goes on in this one! 

This was a surprisingly quick read! A one-day read in fact! Less than 8 hours even! The words and pages were just flowing so fast before my eyes, because I was dying to know what happened to each of the characters. We get Lily and Calder's points of view in this one, plus the occasional chapter being told through Gabby, Daniel, Pavati, Maris and even Nadia's eyes! It helps to get a better understanding of each of the characters. We get more insight to Nadia's plight, what Pavati thinks and feels, how Maris felt about everything...it's quite a lot of info and it's not too much or anything. It's all easy to comprehend, but it's just like...you get sooo much understanding from these characters!

Upon finishing it, I found myself with just a question or two. Mostly just wonderings about some of the secondary characters. But I don't think there will be any answers. None now at least. They aren't burning questions though, just wonderings, as I said. I was otherwise quite pleased and content with the ending. I look forward to reading whatever new world Anne creates in the future! This is definitely one highly recommend mermaid read!!


Overall Rating 4.5/5 stars