Deep End by Ali Hazelwood is a college romance between Scarlet Vandermeer, a competitive diver and Lukas Blomqvist, a world champion swimmer.

Scarlet is a junior at Stanford, she is trying to get into med school. She is also a student athlete for the diving team. She is also recovering from a career ending injury.

Lukas is the swim captain and world champion. He is also trying to go to med school. He is dating another diver, Penelope, and things aren’t going well.

Scarlet and Lukas seem to have nothing in common. Until, one day a secret about Lukas gets shared with Scarlet and they start an arrangement.

I rated this book 3/5 stars. Originally, I read this book because I heard that there was a debate on TikTok about the level of spice this book has. I personally, thought there wasn’t enough spice considering the subject matter in the book. There was only a couple scenes that weren’t even that long. I did enjoy reading the book but like the last book I read, Ice Mechanic, Scarlet was a little insufferable. She could not admit having feelings because she thought she was going to hurt her friend Penelope’s feelings.

This was the second Ali Hazelwood book that I have read. The other was Check and Mate which I believe I rated 5/5 stars on Goodreads. That one was about chess and didn’t have any spicy scenes but chess was really interesting to me. I had high hopes for this book because of TikTok and was a little disappointed that I didn’t love the book.

I guess the lesson here is that you shouldn’t have high hopes about TikTok recommendations.