



Deep End
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4.5 • 237 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
A competitive diver and an ace swimmer jump into forbidden waters in this steamy college romance from the New York Times bestselling author of The Love Hypothesis.
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...
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Having established her bona fides as a supremely talented romance writer, Ali Hazelwood is raising the bar with this deliciously steamy novel. Stanford diver Scarlett “Vandy” Vandermeer is recovering from an injury and trying to reclaim her Olympic hopes. Contrastingly, for swimmer Lukas Blomqvist, Olympic goals are more like certainties. But he dreams of a different kind of dominance—one that Scarlett might be excited to submit to. Hazelwood layers complications on this couple from the jump, including Lukas’ status as the barely-ex-boyfriend of Scarlett’s teammate and best friend, Pen. The heat index is high for this witty college romance, and we loved every minute of it. Take a dive into Deep End’s waters for an angsty, funny, and spicy read that delivers an all-around good time.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Bestseller Hazelwood (The Love Hypothesis) spins a kinky, character-driven new adult romance. After star diver Scarlett Vandermeer, a junior at Stanford, is seriously injured during a competition, she fights to recover the fearless spirit that made her an athletic standout. Her best friend, Pen, has recently broken up with Swedish senior Lukas "Luk" Blomqvist, an Olympic swimming champion, and drunkenly confides to Scarlett that they were sexually incompatible due to Luk's interest in BDSM. With Pen's blessing, Scarlett, who is similarly inclined, meets up with Luk to negotiate a no-commitment, dom/sub relationship. The kink is relatively mild, consisting mostly of power exchange, and the pair quickly break their no-strings rule. As they help each other heal the broken bits of themselves, both work to balance their relationship, their athletic ambitions, and their demanding premed majors—until an important competition throws off everyone's equilibrium. The chemistry between Scarlett and Lukas is volcanic thanks to Hazelwood's crisp prose and molten-hot sex scenes. The author's fans will eat this up.
Customer Reviews
New York City
Conor O’Keefe Keegan O’Keefe Cormac O’Keefe Mike’s O’Keefe Steph O’Keefe
Lacking reality of collegiate team; lost count after 500th orgasm
I struggled to get past how the characters of a small collegiate team basically don't l know each other. To be a D1 athlete, it becomes your job…and your teammates are the family you didn't choose. You're incredibly close. This depiction is so far from the reality of collegiate athletics that it made it difficult to imagine the romantic plot Hazelwood was setting up. (Don’t get me started on the 10 orgams the main character would experience on each encounter…we all love fiction, but I found myself skipping over some of the steamy parts because it was so over the top.)
Ugh
The main female character was so annoying. Her obsession with her “friend’s” happiness over hers was so frustrating.