Antonia Bernardin

The latest book by Ali Hazelwood, Deep End, was the 19th book I read this year.

This one caused quite a stir on booktok because it’s a little spicier than some of her other books, which caused the whole smut book debate to take off again. I was always going to read it as Ali Hazelwood is one of my auto-buys but now I had too because people were making SO much fuss.

You find my reviews of all her books in this post: A review of all Ali Hazelwood books I’ve read

Plot summary attempt

Scarlett is an elite diving athlete at Stanford, just returning from what was a potentially career ending injury. When her dive captain, Pen, mentions that she might have to end her relationship with the swim team’s captain, a several time gold medal olympian, because he’s into *things* in the bedroom that she isn’t. Scarlett tries to give her some advice from her own perspective where she was in a one-sided relationship in that area. When they break up anyway, Pen drunkenly blurts out to Lukas that Scarlett is ‘just like him’.

Suddenly, Scarlett is very aware of his presence around the pool and campus. Cut to a few chance encounters where jokes are exchanged that make it pretty clear that they would be compatible. As she’s trying to get over a mental block with the dive that caused her injury, trying to get into med-school and juggling all that with being an athlete, Scarlett has no time for a relationship. So they come to an… arrangement, which oddly has Pen’s blessing, despite their growing friendship.

Lukas is the opposite of the way Pen had described him in every way, Scarlett is disarmed by how much he notices her, how much he is attune to her feelings and is so good at taking care of her, in more ways than one if you catch my drift, and it is terrifying for Scarlett. Can she allow herself to enjoy a good thing? Does she even deserve to? What if she fails at everything, again?

My thoughts

This book may have over-taken Not in Love as my new favourite of hers. People got so fixated on the kink elements of this book that they lost everything else the plot offers. This book is about trust, which should be at the core of any relationship but is especially important in the activities they participate in. The way Scarlet has to just let go, to be in the moment and get out of her head and enjoy a good thing in the spicy scenes is part of the over-all narrative of the book, it’s not just smut for smut’s sake (in my opinion). Her mental block with diving, her lack of meaningful relationships outside of her step-mom, her never doing anything for fun that isn’t productive and striving for a level of perfection she always going to fail at, all of it gets better when she starts to let go of that control.

I liked this MMC a lot more than some of her previous books too, he’s still super tall, strong and silent-esq but he is not without emotional depth or the ability to communicate. The third-act misunderstanding was not caused by a frustrating thing that a simple conversation could have fixed, it’s caused by two complex people trying to trust each other and the FMC over-coming some deep-seated issues.

Anyone who has read a few of my book reviews on here will know that I’m no prude about spicy books, but I have discovered I prefer a little more plot alongside it. I think anybody who reduced this book down to just the smut scenes have missed the point, the book had a lot of depth, well-rounded characters and an interesting journey.

Buy Deep End for yourself

The paperback on Amazon was only £5.49 at the time of writing this review*

It’s also available on Audible and Kindle. *

*these are affiliate links, it won’t cost you any extra but it might help me earn a little money from this blog!