Ali Hazelwood became one of my new favorite romance authors when she published her first book in 2021.  She initially wrote rom-coms about women in STEM careers, and most of those STEM books are about graduate students.  I love to read about smart and capable individuals, and Hazelwood’s characters are total competence porn!  I also love that at least one of every couple in her books is pretty emotionally clueless but grows into their authentic selves in a more self-actualized way by the end of the story.  Hooray for being emotionally mature in the midst of an angsty romance.

In DEEP END, Hazelwood changes things up for me.  This book is set in college at Stanford, so the characters skew a little younger.  They are both world-class athletes so they seem more mature overall.  This book is also a little sex-forward, with more kink than most previous Hazelwood books.  It took me a little bit to settle into this different feel, but I thoroughly enjoyed DEEP END.

Scarlett Vandermeer is a junior at Stanford and a world-class platform diver.  She’s super smart but very up-in-her-head isolated.  Scarlett prefers to keep the world at arm’s length, concentrating on getting into medical school and also on recovering from the injury that almost ended her diving career.  Unfortunately, she’s got “the yips” about her inside dives- the dive that she whiffed and injured herself doing last year.  I love watching Scarlett come out of her shell to make friends, fall in love, and excel both in her sport and academics.  I cheered for her SO HARD, y’all.

Lukas Blomqvist is Stanford’s swim team captain and freestyle world champion.  He’s uber-disciplined and pretty locked down.  He’s one of those still water-run-deep kind of guys, and I just ate him up!  It’s captivating how much there is roiling beneath his seemingly laid-back exterior. 

Lukas and Scarlett fall into a steamy physical relationship that threatens to sidetrack both of them from their initially rigid plans, and I am here for it.  The sparks fairly fly from these pages.  A mutual friend clues them into their mutual tastes- Lukas likes to dominate and Scarlett is submissive in the bedroom.  What begins as a fling grows into something much more encompassing, tossing both into the deep end together.  Ali Hazelwood’s DEEP END mixes some light kink, marvelous romantic angst, and compelling characters to create a delectable tale.