Overall: 🐢🐢🐢
Storyline:
Writing Style:
Character Development:
Enjoyment:
“If you decide to go for it, I think it should be me.”
Deep End by Ali Hazelwood
The Story:
Scarlett Vandermeer is swimming upstream. A Junior at Stanford and a student-athlete who specializes in platform diving, Scarlett prefers to keep her head down, concentrating on getting into med school and on recovering from the injury that almost ended her career. She has no time for relationships—at least, that’s what she tells herself.
Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.
So they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water…
Key Elements:
Romance, Sports Romance, College, Diving, Kinky, Smut, HEA, Therapy, Best Friend Ex, STEM, Athletes, Trust
Why This Rating?
This was a really enjoyable sports romance read! I sat down to start it, and before I knew it, I’d finished the whole thing! The writing flowed so smoothly that I hardly noticed the time passing—the halfway point crept up on me fast. The humor was on point, and I loved the banter and interactions between the characters. It was easy to fall into the world Hazelwood created. Fun Fact – There are some cameo moments happening in this one! If you’ve read The Love Hypothesis there might be one or two characters that you’ll recognize!
Going in, I knew very little about the diving world, but this book gave me a whole new respect for the sport. I’ve always had a fear of heights, so diving was never something I looked at closely outside of the occasional video. Anyone who willingly climbs a platform and dives – not including only the individuals who can execute beautiful and complex moves – immediately earns major brownie points and respect in my book. I hope readers who are or were involved in the sport would say Hazelwood represented the sport and the athletes well!
The story follows Scarlett’s perspective exclusively, and I really liked that choice. Normally I prefer dual POVs because I’m super nosy and want to know what everyone is thinking and experiencing, but here it worked. Staying in Scarlett’s head kept the focus on her sport, her relationships, her schooling, her accomplishments—we became Scarlett. Lukas still played a big role, and I never felt like I was missing his side of the story. That said, I did enjoy the epilogue from his POV!
Where the book fell a little short for me was in the depth of Scarlett and Lukas’s connection. Their instant lust made sense, and sharing the same kink would definitely bond people, but outside of that, I sometimes questioned what truly kept them together. Honestly, even though we get some steamy scenes throughout, I’d actually state that this was a slow-burn for a relationship and any kind of emotional attachment. New take on slow-burn romance? There is a delicious yearning feel happening around the halfway mark. And the Dom-Sub dynamic was WOW. SO for anyone who says there isn’t some kind of chemistry there – I would disagree. It just seemed like one side of the agreement was overall more invested than the other emotionally.
Scarlett’s therapy journey, meant to address her PTSD from a diving injury, had potential but felt like a secondary thought for the overall plot. I feel like this inclusion was needed for Scarlett to work through her internal turmoil. However, the therapy scenes often popped up abruptly, almost like they were inserted because “it had been a while,” rather than woven into the narrative. Some were even set apart in short, single-page chapters, which really pulled me out of the reading. Sometimes because the change was abrupt and with little identifiers saying “therapy session” and other times because they were so short. I do appreciate the normalcy of having therapy added into her daily life.
Overall, this is a fast, fun read with plenty of humor, a steamy romance, and a look into a sport most wouldn’t think about. While I would have liked more emotional depth in the relationship, I wasn’t upset about this kind of a reverse slow-burn we got to experience. Having the relationship develop as we were experiencing that smut made it sweet. They didn’t have the shy moment of getting to have sex after weeks of being together. If anything we got to see them have the shy moments of being emotionally open with each other. Yes they had the trust, but the full acceptance was what I craved! It was a really enjoyable read! The perfect book for any sport romance readers!
Time to get lost in the next story!
