🎧 Reviewed by LD | Rating: 3.4/5 | Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥
⚠️ This is a full spoiler review. If you haven’t read Deep End yet — go read it first. We’ll be here when you’re done.
The Opening
An elite Stanford diver with a mental block, a Swedish Olympic swimmer with a dominant streak, and a BDSM checklist that they actually fill out and exchange before anything happens. Ali Hazelwood doing something a little different this time, and it mostly works, with some genuinely weird choices along the way.
The Full Story — Spoilers Included
The Setup
Scarlett, who goes by Vandy, is a Stanford junior and competitive platform diver. Two years ago she had a catastrophic injury during a championship dive and while her body healed, her brain hasn’t caught up. She can’t do the inward dive anymore and the mental block is getting worse.
Her close friend and diving captain Penn is on the verge of breaking up with her long-term boyfriend Lukas, a Swedish swimming champion and Olympic hopeful, because his interest in BDSM and power exchange is something she has zero interest in. During this conversation Vandy admits she has her own private curiosity about exactly that. Penn, being Penn, files this information away.
After she and Lukas quietly break up, Penn gets drunk at a party and announces to Lukas directly that he and Vandy share the same interests and should just sleep together. Mortifying for everyone involved.
The Arrangement
Vandy and Lukas keep crossing paths on campus, especially once they end up on the same biology research project together. Lukas approaches her directly about what Penn said. Instead of immediately jumping into anything, they do something genuinely refreshing: they fill out detailed BDSM checklists, exchange them, establish clear boundaries, and agree to a private, temporary arrangement while he prepares for the Olympic qualifiers.
It works for both of them. Vandy finds that submitting to Lukas gives her a kind of mental quiet she hasn’t been able to find anywhere else, a break from the anxiety that’s been running her life since the injury.
The odd wrinkle is what happens after their first time together. Lukas goes quiet. Ignores her for two weeks. He later explains he was trying to prove to himself he could function without her. Which is a strange way to start something and a stranger thing to admit later.
Throughout all of this, Penn knows Lukas and Vandy are sleeping together and is actively encouraging it. She’s become closer with Vandy during this time. Then, when Penn asks Vandy directly if she should pursue Lukas again — if she would mind — Vandy says absolutely not, go for it. Which, given the situation, is kind of wild. Considering Vandy admits she is falling for Lukas.
The Trauma
The real source of Vandy’s mental block comes out during an emotional breakdown with Lukas. The day before the championship dive that ended with her injury, her estranged and abusive father broke his restraining order to contact her, and her boyfriend at the time dumped her right before she got on the platform. The injury happened in the context of all of that. It wasn’t just a physical fall.
Lukas takes her to the pool in the middle of the night and creates a space where she can try the inward dive without any of the usual pressure. She does it. It works.
She carries that confidence all the way to the NCAA championships and wins.
Penn’s Reaction
Lukas kisses Vandy right after she wins. Penn sees it and completely loses it. Despite knowing they had broken up, despite knowing Lukas and Vandy had been together, despite actively encouraging it, Penn turns against Vandy entirely. She refuses to tell their teammates that she and Lukas had broken up, which makes it look like Vandy stole her boyfriend and like they were cheating. She acts betrayed by the whole situation as if none of the previous months happened.
Lukas tells Vandy he loves her. Instead of this being a good moment it becomes another thing to spiral about on top of Penn’s reaction. Vandy runs.
The Resolution
Vandy goes to her stepmother’s place to clear her head. She has a breakthrough and realizes she needs to get to Lukas. On her way out she runs into Penn, who apologizes and explains herself. With that cleared up Vandy buys a plane ticket to Stockholm.
She convinces Lukas’s brother to help her get to him. She shows up at his dad’s house. Lukas is already waiting outside. She assumes his brother told him she was coming. Lukas tells her he’s been checking her shared location the whole time and watched her flight track toward him.
They make up.
The epilogue jumps years forward. They’re both doctors, getting married, presumably happy. It felt a bit distant as endings go, like a summary of a happy ending rather than the actual feeling of one. Married, but their schedules are always off. They don’t really see each other.
The Odd Bits
A few things in this book that never quite resolved themselves. Vandy cries pretty much every time they have sex, which the book frames as emotional release and maybe catharsis but reads as strange after a while. Their relationship as a whole has an odd energy because they don’t seem to spend much time actually together outside of the arrangement and the research project. And the two week silence after their first time is never really satisfactorily addressed beyond Lukas admitting it was fear.
Best Part of This Book
The checklist scene. More communication and intentionality than most romance novels bother with, and it makes everything that follows feel grounded rather than gratuitous.
Worst Part of This Book
Penn. The entire Penn arc. Actively encouraging the relationship and then acting betrayed by it is a character choice I cannot get behind, and the resolution felt too easy for the damage she caused.
The Steam Rating Breakdown
🔥🔥🔥🔥 — This one earns its four flames. The BDSM element is handled with more care and communication than you’d usually see in a romance novel. The checklist scene alone is more thoughtful than most books manage. Content warnings for power exchange dynamics, past abusive relationship with a parent, and discussion of a sports injury and trauma.
The Ending — Satisfied or Disappointed?
Mildly satisfied. The Stockholm reunion is sweet. The epilogue felt a little far away to really connect with.
Would I Reread It?
No.
Who Is This For
Ali Hazelwood fans who want to see her try something with higher heat and a more explicit exploration of BDSM dynamics than her usual books. Readers who are specifically interested in seeing power exchange handled with communication and consent as central rather than assumed. Just go in knowing the relationship dynamic is a bit unusual and the friend group drama is genuinely frustrating.
Where to Get
📖 Physical Book
Amazon | Bookshop.org
📱 Ebook
Amazon | Bookshop.org
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