I'm in two minds about this book - hence the 3-stars.

This is the second book I've read from Fiona Neill (the other being "The Betrayals"). Whilst I found the story interesting, I developed an intense dislike for some of the characters (in particular Grace, Rob and Cormack), and found the constant references to the damp atmosphere rather depressing (the book is certainly no advert for living in the Fens!) I was also disturbed at the idea of Mia keeping a wild eel in a bucket - the eel seemed more of a prisoner than a pet.

I did enjoy a lot of the book. The plot was good, and some of the characters were interesting - particularly the intelligent but eccentric Mia. There were some comical moments (eg: the reference to "Staying Alive"). The book ends dramatically - but without really ending, so I wonder if a further chapter in the lives of these characters is planned? I'd read it if so.

My thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for an ARC.

I really enjoyed this book even though it’s a bit different to my usual reads. I like the hidden meanings in the storyline and really enjoyed reading about the family. I liked the characters and loved Mia and her personality! The writing was really good and definitely made it easy for me to imagine the characters as real people. I like that you learn about Grace’s past, as it helps you to understand her character better. The reason for my 3 star rating is because I have a few questions, and I feel like the story wasn’t finished very well. There’s lots of things that I would still like to know, and if things were wrapped up properly then this would have been 4 stars for me. This book was a nice change from thrillers, and I would definitely be interested in reading more from Fiona Neill!

This book by Fiona Neill is unlike any that I have read previously. There are so many complex relationships. Ostensibly about two sisters, the book tells of their relationship, of their parents inability to deal with the issues life is throwing at them, of the elder sister, Lilly and her early steps into adult life, of the confusion of Lilly's younger sibling Mia.
There are complex relationships at all levels. Lilly has what appears to be a seizure, this throws up the uncertainties of her parents relationships. Mia lives in a world fueled by her imagination. Grace had a dysfunctional family as a child and has difficulties with her own mother /daughter relationships. Patrick is a financial mess and can't face up to it. The book touches on so many important issues and leaves you wishing the family well. So many things go wrong that it's hard to see a way forward.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book, it took me by surprise but I found it hard to put down and a pleasure to pick up again.

This was a wee bit different to my usual reading material. I spent the majority of the book wondering where exactly we were headed and it turned out to be nowhere I had thought of. I feel a bit protective towards Mia and wish I could revisit her in a few years time just to see how she is doing. She is certainly the stand out character here. A slow, brooding sort of read that somehow manages to be gripping.

This is a book about the lies and secrets that people tell and hide to protect the people they love but if they are not careful it will catch them out and damage the very people they are trying to protect.A very deep story which can be very disturbing.

This novel is an emotional, slow burn family drama, full of secrets and lies. The characters are well drawn as is the setting. The pace is a little slow but I still found myself compelled to read to the end. My thanks to Net Galley, the author and publisher for allowing me to read an advance copy in exchange for an honest review.

In this book we meet a family who are struggling. Patrick with his financial problems, Grace trying to escape her past, Lily and her first love and finally Mia who thinks she can fix them all.
Mia is by far the most endearing character in the story. She is under appreciated by everyone even though she tries so hard to please.
Read this book and then give those close to you a big hug.

Family life in all it’s madness, complexity and the things that aren’t talked about. We all underestimate the ways in which our own childhood can affect our lives and relationships. This story may make you reflect on your own childhood and evaluate how it has made you into what you are now. The characters are all very believable and ...Wow...what an ending! I am not saying anything...read it for yourself.

A complex and insightful exploration of the modern family.

Grace, Patrick, Lilly and Mia are on the surface an ideal, nuclear family. As the story progresses, the layers are peeled away, and the controlling behaviour, emotional damage, lies and secrets are revealed, and the family implodes.

This stories most poignant message is that children need protection, sometimes even from their parents, to ensure negative behaviours, unrequited ambitions and hopes, are not instilled into them.

Mia’s chance discovery during a family barbeque has a devastating effect. Not, only the revelation, but the chain of events it catalyses, and the secrets it forces to the surface.

The characters are multi-layered and realistic, Mia is the antithesis of Lilly, the ‘golden child’. They are both intelligent but influenced by their mother’s attitude towards them.

The story is suspenseful, with an underlying layer of menace. You are constantly waiting for something bad to happen, and this makes it riveting and unnerving to read. The authenticity of the setting, and characters adds to this.

I like the ending, it brings together everything that has gone before, through nail-biting action scenes and a poignant, yet hopeful final end.

I received a copy of this book from Penguin Books UK – Michael Joseph Publishing in return for an honest review.

The tale of a dysfunctional family, Patrick and Grace, and their two daughters, Lilly and Grace, and the secrets they are all harbouring. I loved a lot about this book - Fiona Neill writes very well, the descriptions of the Fenland setting are outstanding and Mia is an intriguing and beautifully drawn character. Whilst not a fast paced book, and more of an emotional slow-burn family drama, the twists and turns as secrets were uncovered kept me interested for most of the book. However, as it came towards the end I felt it lost its way a little and the ending felt very abrupt.

Thank you to Netgalley and Michael Joseph for an advance copy.

After a chaotic childhood, Grace Vermuyden is determined her own daughters will fulfil the dreams denied to her. Lilly is everyone's golden girl, the popular, clever daughter she never had to worry about. So when she mysteriously has a fit in class, Grace's carefully ordered world begins to unravel.
Consumed with paranoia, and faced with increasing evidence that Lilly has been leading a secret life, Grace starts to search for clues. But left to her own devices, ten-year-old Mia develops some wild theories of her own that have unforeseen and devastating consequences for the people she loves most.
I feel I’m sitting on the fence with this book, it was well written, the characters were well portrayed & the pace overall was good but it didn’t grab me & I found myself putting it down & reading something else then reading another couple of chapters, so it took me what seemed like forever to finish which isn’t normal for me as I usually devour a book in well under a day. I’ll certainly try more books by the author but this one left me lukewarm.
My honest review is for a special copy I voluntarily read

I just finished reading this compelling, original story and was blown away by it. Set in the fen land around Cambridge, it features a family which outwardly seems cohesive and strong, but who knows what goes on beneath the surface? Grace married Patrick in the hope of love, security and a happy family. Many of us do this, but who knows Grace's motivation, and how her own upbringing will shape her adult life? Is Patrick as safe and sensible as he seems? Their two daughters, Lilly (17) and Mia (9) are intriguing characters. Lilly is very intelligent, popular, beautiful and stylish, while Mia is a creative and curious soul who struggles to write out her ideas but gives her all when subjects catch her imagination. Everyone has their secrets, and struggles to keep them shut into their boxes but the pressure increases. When Lilly is taken ill in class at school, is she grievously sick, the first victim of an epidemic or is something else at play? Can the lid be kept down on what lies beneath the surface? What is the truth and can they survive? An intriguing, intelligent and topical book which rewards the reader and would be an excellent book group choice, it really deserves to be widely read.

Another gripping tale from Fiona Neill. This isn’t a genre I usually pick up- I prefer a good thriller to a tense, mysterious “contemporary” (if that’s the right description?)- but Neill’s work just has a quality about it that I rather enjoy.

Grace and Patrick’s family is on tenterhooks, really, each keeping secrets from the others, including daughters Lilly and Mia. When Lilly collapses in class, these secrets begin to come out. I really enjoyed trying to work out the truth behind each character. What really happened when Grace was young? What really happened at the festival between Lilly, Cormack and their friends? What really happened with Mia and Tas? I didn’t manage to work out any of these truths before their reveals, and that is what I love about this book. So many answers and twists that I just couldn’t guess at.

The pace of this story is slow most of the time. It moves along like the waters of a Fenland river, quietly deceptive but perfectly capable of running wild. It allows the reader to wade in deeper and deeper until fully immersed, unable to back away, committed to going through to the other side.

The Vermuyden family have recently moved to a new build house in the Cambridgeshire Fens. All the houses on the estate are falling apart and no-one seems prepared to accept responsibility for the problems. To me, the state of the decay of the house perfectly mirrored the state of the Vermuyden family dynamic.

Patrick wanted a successful teaching career but despite doing everything right and being the perfect son his life isn't turning out the way he wanted and he has to borrow money from his free-spirited younger brother in order to, quite literally, keep his head above water.

Grace had a feral childhood. The neglect, trauma and abuse she endured have led to a deep-seated need for order and certainty in her life. She is determined to provide her daughters with the safe, comfortable, controlled lifestyle she never knew while growing up.

Lily is seventeen. A teenager coping with the fallout from a doomed summer romance while facing all the pressure that comes with being academically gifted.

Ten-year-old Mia is prickly and difficult to be around, but she is fiercely loyal to the people she loves.

This is a complex story with characters that are, in the most part, well developed. It shows how little we sometimes know about the people closest to us.

There is a lot of misdirection going on in this book. I thought I knew what was going to happen, who did what, and the reasons for everything. I was wrong. All my assumptions were proved incorrect but that just made for a much more enjoyable read.

I enjoyed this book, sometimes I felt the story was a bit slow in the middle, as I was very keen to find out why Lilly collapsed and what secrets was she hiding
Lilly was a very intelligent, top of her class girls, her mum Grace expected a lot of her. One day she collapsed in the school.
Mia, who is younger than Lilly age 10/11, is intelligent in her own way, but the parents don't expect too much of her. She is quite misunderstood in school.
Patrick, the dad he has his own secrets and he is scared that one day Grace finds out that he hasn't paid for the repairs of their house and that they are in debt.
Overall it's a good read.

This is the first book I have read by Author Fiona Neill.

It’s set in the Fens, where Patrick and Grace Vermuyden and their two daughters, teenager Lilly and ten year old Mia, are living in badly built, damp and draughty house. Grace says it’s because the marshland beneath is reclaiming the land. It’s not just the land and the house that cause the problems the family face. They’re a dysfunctional family, all of them keeping their secrets well hidden from each other – as the subtitle indicates: Everyone Lies.

Patrick’s in debt, Grace keeps the tragedy of her childhood to herself, wanting her daughters to have the happy childhood denied to her, Lilly seems to have everything going for her, a clever girl who looks set to do well and go to university, until she suffers a seizure and collapses at school. Whilst Lilly spends time in hospital as they try to discover what is the cause of her illness Grace discovers to her great dismay that Lilly has been living a secret life.

As for Mia, she is a problem child and always in trouble at school. Her only friend is Tas, who lives in a caravan on the Travellers’ site. She’s an eccentric child with a vivid imagination, who keeps an eel she calls Elvis, in a bucket in her bedroom and she has a knack of saying the most inappropriate remarks at the wrong time. At times I really didn’t like her much – especially for keeping the eel in captivity and also because of the barefaced lies she sometimes tells. And it is Mia’s actions, for ever wildly thinking up reasons for what is going on around her that add to their problems. Even as she tries to put things right everything just seems to get worse.

Beneath the Surface is an emotionally charged novel about the burden of keeping secrets and the effects that misunderstandings and lies can have. In parts I found the story weighed down with words, but I was gripped by it and anxious for all the characters as it seemed they were in an ever decreasing spiral of disastrous events. After quite a slow start it gradually builds to a dramatic climax that took me totally by surprise.

Grace Vermuyden is put in an unenviable position when her daughter Lilly mysteriously collapses in class.
Lilly has never been a problem for her, unlike her little sister Mia. But as Grace desperately tries to find answers, she discovers Lilly's secret life, as well as many other untold truths from within her own family.

I was gripped by this book from the first chapter, but unfortunately the pace was really slow. Fiona Neill does a really good job of describing the sort of normal interactions that might take place within a family, but we lose a lot of the intrigue as a result, and the book felt like a chore to finish.

Mia is undoubtedly the most interesting character, but with Grace taking on so much of the story, she's not allowed to truly shine. The other characters aren't really developed enough to get attached to.

The concept of the book showed promise, but unfortunately the execution was really disappointing.

An atmospheric family drama set in the Fens, near Cambridge, Beneath the Surface tells the story of the Vermuydens, whose secrets, lies and betrayals begin to emerge after teenage Lilly Vermuyden has an unexplained seizure at school one day. The effects on the whole family, including her anxious mother Grace, debt-ridden father Patrick and intelligent outsider younger sister Mia are intense. Fiona Neill’s narrative is carefully constructed, slow-moving at times while still maintaining the tension and capturing the voices and emotions of each family member. The Fenland landscapes and their history are also richly portrayed. Although the ending felt a little rushed and left a few too many questions unanswered, I very much enjoyed the voyage.

The fenlands to the east of Cambridge make for a perfect setting to this story of a family whose secrets, lies and tensions lie barely hidden beneath the surface, reflecting the precarious foundations of land reclaimed from the sea. The precocious younger daughter Mia is a delightfully eccentric character who steals the show as soon as she appears, which made my interest flag when she wasn’t around, but thankfully the plot picks up towards the end.

Beneath the Surface is the first book by Fiona Neill that I’ve read. I was impressed by her skill in depicting the minutiae of day to day life. She’s created characters with substance and this is a complex tale of relationships, lies and deception.

Grace and her husband appear to have the ideal life. Their children, Lily and Mia are very different. Lily is destined for Cambridge and is under pressure from her mother to study hard...but she has a boyfriend and her interests lie there. Mia is often ignored and is quirky. When Lily collapses at school her sister is keen to uncover the truth.

The story is well paced and the plotting is intricate and twisted. Nothing is as it seems and I was surprised a number of times. Layers are peeled away as dark secrets from the past come to light. I felt the story lost a little pace in the latter part, but overall, I enjoyed it and will certainly look for more from Fiona Neil.

My thanks to the publisher for a review copy via Netgalley.