I’m a stack of hypersensitivities in a trench coat–
Ali Hazelwood, Deep End
I’ve been impatiently waiting for Ali Hazelwood’s latest romantic comedy, Deep End, ever since it was announced! I couldn’t stop reading The Love Hypothesis, Love, Theoretically and Love on The Brain. I practically inhaled Bride. When her long-awaited sports romance finally came out on February 4th, I practically dropped everything else I was reading. Eager to devour Lukas and Scarlett’s love story, I binged Deep End in just a few days. Unfortunately—although Deep End is her most mature book—the plot and the characters didn’t fully come together for me. As a lifelong Ali Hazelwood fan, I’m heartbroken that this book just wasn’t for me. Read the full recap of Deep End and my review on why it ultimately didn’t make a splash for me below. This synopsis includes spoilers!
What's your favorite Ali Hazelwood book?
What's your favorite Ali Hazelwood book?
Deep End Full Summary
Deep End takes place at Stanford University in Palo Alto, California.
The FMC is Scarlett Vandermeer, or Vandy, a junior diver on Stanford’s diving team. Scarlett is recovering from an injury that required surgeries and long-term physical therapy. She also has a lingering mental block that prevents her from completing a certain kind of dive. Quiet and reserved, she’s funny once you get to know her. Scarlett is also interested in power exchange relationships, where she takes on the submissive role.
The MMC is Lukas Blomqvist, a Swedish Olympic athlete on Stanford’s swimming team. Lukas is quiet, confident, tall, blonde, and handsome. He’s authoritative and dominant, always knowing the right thing to say.
The story begins with Scarlett overhearing an argument between Lukas and his long-term girlfriend, Penelope Ross. Their relationship is struggling. Lukas wants power exchange to be part of their dynamic. Penelope is uninterested. Having been together since they were sixteen, Penelope now wants to explore other relationships.
Scarlett, who has kept to herself on the diving team since her injury, steps out of her comfort zone and invites Penelope for coffee. During their conversation, Scarlett shares that she’s also interested in power exchange relationships. She also offers to answer any questions Penelope might have. Penelope calls Scarlett’s confession as being very Fifty Shades and labels her a kinkster.
Penelope and Lukas break up but decide to keep it a secret. Scarlett assumes it’s because Lukas is a public figure. She later learns that Penelope enjoys the social protection that comes with being an Olympic athlete’s girlfriend. At a party, Penelope gets drunk and reveals Scarlett’s sexual preferences to Lukas, attempting to set them up. Mortified, Scarlett disengages from the conversation.
Scarlett is a pre-med major studying for the MCAT. She was raised by her stepmother, Barb, an orthopedic surgeon. Barb has won sole custody after rescuing Scarlett from an abusive relationship with her father. She is the primary reason Scarlett aspires to become a doctor.
As part of her pre-med curriculum, Scarlett takes a Computational Biology class taught by Dr. Adam Carlsen (yes, that Adam!). He takes notice of her paper on neural networks for cancer research and recruits her to work alongside Dr. Olive Smith (yes, that Olive!). Scarlett joins the undergraduate research team, which includes Olive, her TA Zach—who is very into her—and none other than Lukas.
As they spend more time together, Lukas suggests they start hooking up. Scarlett hesitates because she has grown close to Penelope and doesn’t want to break the girl code. However, when she checks in, Penelope—now happily dating a hot teacher named Theo—gives her blessing.
Scarlett and Lukas begin a secret relationship, as the campus still believes he and Penelope are together. Meanwhile, Penelope and Lukas remain close, having been best friends for years.
Scarlett struggles with PTSD from her injury and a mental block, twisties, that prevents her from completing an inward dive. Though she has seen a psychologist for help, her coaches have nearly given up on her. Over time, Scarlett works through her perfectionism and eventually lands the dive successfully.
During the USA Diving Tournament, another diver, Carissa, warns Scarlett about Penelope. Carissa reveals that she and Penelope used to dive together. Later, Penelope tells Scarlett that she had to report Carissa’s mother for running a dangerous diving institute.
Lukas and Scarlett continue growing closer. Meanwhile, Theo breaks up with Penelope. It makes Penelope starts reconsidering her feelings for Lukas—despite his obvious interest in Scarlett (which Scarlett is oblivious to). When Scarlett, who now considers Penelope her best friend, tries to talk to her about it, Penelope reduces Scarlett and Lukas’s relationship to their sexual preferences.
Lukas wants to take things further with Scarlett, but she remains hesitant, still unwilling to hurt Penelope. Just as they’re about to move forward, Penelope is accused of doping. She leans on both Lukas and Scarlett for support while awaiting retesting, even staying at Lukas’s house during the ordeal.
At the NCAA Diving Championship, Scarlett beats Penelope, winning the gold medal and qualifying for the Olympics. In celebration, Lukas kisses Scarlett in public for the first time, revealing their relationship. Penelope loses it, accusing Scarlett of stealing both Lukas and her gold medal. Their team also accuses Scarlett of cheating. Lukas defends her, explaining what really happened, and tries to confess his love, but Scarlett, overwhelmed, runs away.
She flies to St. Louis to start her summer internship early. Penelope later shows up, apologizing for her behavior and admitting she was possessive and unfair. The two reconcile.
Scarlett then flies to Sweden, finally ready to be with Lukas. They reunite and officially become a couple.
In the epilogue, a few years later, both Scarlett and Lukas are doctors—he works with brains, while she works with bones. They’re engaged, have a cat, and are happily living their happily ever after.
Deep End Review
TL;DR: I didn’t get this one, fam. I wanted to love this book so much. Instead, I loved to hate it. 😭
As an avid hockey romance reader, sports romances are my bread and butter. Having devoured almost everything Ali Hazelwood has written before, I was gnawing at the bars of my enclosure to get my hands on Deep End. But… the plot doesn’t come together. The side characters are shallow caricatures, and some of them serve no purpose. The book, I think, tries to be sex-positive, but most of the engagement feels like it was read off Wikipedia and slapped on the page. It feels inauthentic and shallow—trying to be something it’s not. Then there are the main characters.
Scarlett Vandermeer is different from AH’s usual main characters, but not by much. She’s still very smart and beautiful. She is a successful athlete. She’s quiet and reserved, whereas her other characters are usually quirky and chatty. But she’s still not like the other girls, and I’m sorry—I am so tired of “everybody is in love with her, but she has no idea.”
It’s one thing to make a main character that everybody wants—fine, it makes her desirable. But for the love of God, stop making them so oblivious that I want to reach into the page and smack them on the head.
Lukas Blomqvist is a dreamy book boyfriend. First of all, he’s blonde. That’s a nice trade-off from the 6’8″ fae warriors with night-black hair and violet eyes. He’s an Olympic swimmer and is from Sweden, as Ali Hazelwood loves to bring in a European character. That’s great too—I’ve fallen in love with her signature trope of foreign language and language integration. It’s a part of her heritage (if you know Ali’s bio), and it gives her books a unique charm.
But the whole “he’s calm, confident, with the personality of a brick wall” trope is a tired approach. Maybe I’m just burned out from her MMCs, but it feels like you could swap any of them, and you wouldn’t notice. I’m a sucker for a man who is pathetically in love, and Ali does write them well, but they need distinct personality traits for me to keep paying to consume these books.
For all my complaining, Lukas is dreamy and checks every box for a book boyfriend. However, it also feels like I won’t remember him in a few months.
Side Characters Are One Dimensional
Penelope is objectively the worst friend I’ve read about in a long time. She acts like a high school mean girl. I understand why Scarlett lets Pen walk all over her throughout the book—she’s a compulsive people pleaser, an instinct I can relate to. But I don’t get why “knows-what-he-wants” and “basically all-knowing” Lukas should ever let her get away with the stuff she pulls. She’s not a girls’ girl, and to her credit, Scarlett does call her out on it—but then forgives her before we even get to the end of the page. Frustrating.
Scarlett’s roommate, Maryam, serves no real purpose for how much space she takes up in the book. She’s the butt of multiple jokes, and Scarlett complains about her constantly. But other than being a plot device for Ali to drop shock-inducing, funny-ish one-liners, she doesn’t add anything.
Lukas’s roommates are more or less the same—their entire presence could have been avoided. They seem to exist only to elevate Scarlett as a “desirable female main character,” which, as I mentioned, I despise as a literary device.
Plot is Pretty Much Slice of Life
As a primarily fantasy reader, I prefer even romance books to have a solid plot. But the diving aspect of this book just doesn’t come together. We spend an excessive amount of time learning about dives and technique. I wish more of that time had been spent on Scarlett—her injury, and the demanding reality of being a collegiate athlete on the mend—instead of teaching us how diving spreadsheets work. This isn’t the first time in this book that it felt like Ali searched content on Wikipedia and copy-pasted it onto the page. While her intent may have been to demonstrate her knowledge of diving and college sports, it felt more like a lore dump.
Then there’s the elephant in the room—Scarlett and Lukas’s romance. I believe the intent was for this book to be more explicit—by far her most mature work—and to push a sex-positive message. But the way the two characters are reduced to their sexual preferences—so very publicly, I might add—makes it their defining characteristic within the first 20% of the book. This is a departure from the empowered women she’s written about in her previous books. Not to mention, their explicit interactions feel rigid, forced, and unrealistic—like a badly researched topic.
There isn’t nearly enough relationship build-up. Listen—I love that trope. Like I said, I’m a sucker for a man so pathetically in love. The angst is usually palpable on the page. Ali Hazelwood knows how to write a certain relationship, and all of her books kind of follow the same formula. And I’m okay with that. So much so that I even made a Deep End bingo card based on what I expected to happen in this book (I got 8/16, which is pretty good IMO).
But even though Lukas’s devotion to Scarlett from their first interaction is great to read, I would have much rather read about them actually falling in love. Instead, it feels like Lukas has loved her forever, and we just read for 300 pages until Scarlett figures it out.
It was so nice to see Olive and Adam, happy and thriving. It’s like seeing old friends again.
Speaking of, what college student knows neural networks at a graduate level? I know it’s fiction, but it still feels very implausible. Not to mention, Scarlett is a 4.0 GPA, NCAA Division 1 athlete. Oh and they both get into med school and are also Olympic athletes? Talk about setting unrealistic expectations for college students.
I know I did a lot of complaining about the plot and the setup, but this was still a nice palette cleanser. I think I’m biased and spoiled by fantasy books these days, where plots are set up eight books in advance. But for what this is—a romcom—it’s a decent time. It is my least favorite Ali Hazelwood book (for the record, Bride is my all-time favorite, in case you’re curious), but I still enjoyed it. On the bright side, it’s also her most well-written book in terms of prose—her writing is definitely improving, and I love that for her!
So there you have it—my Deep End review. This book won’t turn me away from future Ali Hazelwood reads, but I probably won’t drop everything to read the next one.
Except for Bride 2. I will be taking the day off and turning off my phone for that one.
Find Deep End
“I’m afraid of the unpredictability of existing.”
Ali Hazelwood, Deep End
Did you read Deep End? Let me know what you thought about it in the comments!
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