Scarlett Vandermeer, often called Vandy, is a student at Stanford University, aged 21. I don’t know if she got in on a sports scholarship, as that’s not explicitly told, but clearly, she belongs here as she’s working extremely well through med science projects. Her sport is diving, which puts her in the DEEP END of the pool. Diving and swimming are two completely different sports, we’re told, swimming being much more about endurance and speed. Diving is judged more like figure skating. A Stanford swimming team captain, Lukas Blomqvist, with some gold medals to his name, also wants to be a medical student. That’s not all they have in common.
This New Adult romance focuses on young people at the peak physical time of their lives, full of hormones, adrenalin, nerves, and pressure to succeed in many fields. I like the emphasis on competitive sports as well as an academic career. However, as my sport involved horses, I do find the depicted sport a self-obsession. With horses, everything is about keeping the horse healthy and keen. With aquatics, it seems to be all about the individual. As they have this intense self-focus, their minds get a bit warped. That’s the only explanation I can find for some of the romance elements.
Lukas has been dating Vandy’s best friend Penelope Ross for a couple of years, yet Vandy doesn’t seem to have eaten or chatted with him at any time. He’s from Sweden, so this is nicely not an all-American superiority story, but a melding of cultures. Lukas has just been dumped by Penelope, who drunkenly suggests he should hook up with Vandy. I can see this would be awkward, but they take her at her word, only they don’t tell anyone the true situation; which means they don’t go on dates or link social media profiles. They just fall into each other’s arms after class, still in the emptied classrooms. This goes on for many months. It’s not as if anyone was married. This can’t be good for Vandy’s head, and Pen is pretending she is dating Lukas while never being seen with him – and dating someone else. None of this works as far as I am concerned. Pen wants Lukas to come back to if she gets tired of the next guy, while Vandy goes along with it ‘For Pen’s sake’ and Lukas seems quite happy having a lover he doesn’t have to buy dinner or gifts for, who conveniently trains all the time like he does.
The parade of competitive events means that one city is the same as another because all we see are the pools. I was more interested in the science projects. So when Vandy suffers a setback and says that if she can’t be a diver, she doesn’t know who she is, I’m thinking, “You want to be a medical professional, remember?” She’s a nice girl, too nice sometimes, but a hard worker.
Ali Hazelwood previously wrote another college-based romance, and some of the characters recur in DEEP END. I found the kink aspect overstated, but the main thing is that nobody wants to harm anyone else. New Adult readers will find a lot to learn, and feel the suspense of major competition along with the stress of getting good grades. I don’t know how young people can survive all this, honestly. I guess we just did.
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...
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