Disliked It: Love Lies Beneath by Ellen Hopkins

Series: Love Lies Beneath 1
Format: eGalley
Release Date: July 21, 2015
Publisher: Atria
Source: eGalley
Genre: Women's Literature

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Collateral comes a gripping novel about a woman caught in a love affair that could be her salvation...or her undoing.

Tara is gorgeous, affluent, and forty. She lives in an impeccably restored Russian Hill mansion in San Francisco. Once a widow, twice divorced, she’s a woman with a past she prefers keeping to herself.

Enter Cavin Lattimore. He’s handsome, kind, charming, and the surgeon assigned to Tara following a ski accident in Lake Tahoe. In the weeks it takes her to recover, Cavin sweeps her off her feet and their relationship blossoms into something Tara had never imagined possible. But then she begins to notice some strange things: a van parked outside her home at odd times, a break-in, threatening text messages and emails. She also starts to notice cracks in Cavin’s seemingly perfect personality, like the suppressed rage his conniving teenage son brings out in him, and the discovery that Cavin hired a detective to investigate her immediately after they met.

Now on crutches and housebound, Tara finds herself dependent on the new man in her life—perhaps too much so. She’s handling rocky relationships with her sister and best friend, who are envious of her glamour and freedom; her prickly brother-in-law, who is intimidated by her wealth and power; and her estranged mother. However perfect Tara’s life appears, things are beginning to get messy.

Writing in beautiful prose, Ellen Hopkins unveils a new style while evoking her signature poetic form that readers fell in love with in Collateral and Triangles.

I was very excited to read LOVE LIES BENEATH by Ellen Hopkins because it's her first adult novel, and it's written in prose. If you're familiar or have read EHopkins, you know that she tackles unpretty storylines, with unapologetic and messed up characters, and tells the story in such beautifully structured poetry. So it goes without saying that I was disappointed that this novel was a dud for me.

Let me start from the beginning. I had a good time getting to know Tara. She's not likable in the sense that you'd want to be friends with her. Tara might be gorgeous and rich, but she's a barracuda, a bitch, and some people might even call her the C-word. It's not warranted, Tara IS an abrasive character and one of the driving forces that will keep you reading is you want to know how she became like this. Tara might be easy to hate, but there's also something fascinating about her unapologetic brashness similar to all the Amy Dunnes populating this genre of late. 

Let me also insert here that EHopkins didn't deprive us of her poems all together, there were a few inserted in between chapters which were delighted me.

Things unravled for me in the second half and here are the reasons why:

• The tepid romance. Tara's has admitted that she's never been in love and her marriages were similar to business partnerships with fringe benefits. And so when Dr. Cavin Lattimore came in her life, I expected this blazing, life-changing romance that will awaken Tara's softer side. The sex was hot, Cavin didn't run out of romantic gestures, but Tara came across unaffected. This romance didn't feel like a love connection to me, but another relationship destined to fail.


• A quarter in, Tara started getting these threatening messages which popped here and there but there's no active follow through. The big reveal was also a let down and totally harmless. 


• No noticeable character development. In the beginning, Tara was exciting and I love the dark shadows of her character. However all the changes and recent interactions in her life didn't change Tara, it didn't make her maternal, more loving, kinder, tolerant. NOTHING. Tara is still Tara and she slowly but surely bored me in the end.

Still, don't take my word for it. I'm just but one reader in a sea of many. So don't scratch this off your lists yet, I still recommend that you read LOVE LIES BENEATH if it's already in your TBR. 

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