Deep end
Hey everyone, my name is Amanda and I’m the Funsize Reader. Today I want to talk to you about *Deep End* by Ali Hazelwood. Today’s video is also going to be our Funsize Book Club discussion, but that will be at the end of the video. So I’m going to do all of my pre-review that is spoiler-free, and I will warn you when we get to the discussion because I will be talking about specifics in this book.
I picked *Deep End* by Ali Hazelwood for February of 2024. I’ve read almost all of Ali’s published books — not all of them, but almost all of them. I haven’t read the YA one even though I have it up there on the shelf, and then I haven’t read one other one, I think the one that came before this one. Can’t remember what it’s called, but I haven’t read that one.
I have really enjoyed most of her books, so I would say I’m an Ali Hazelwood fan. I think the second one that I read — the second one that she published (again, can’t remember which one it was) — I didn’t love. It was okay, it was good, I liked it, but I loved the other ones. *Love Hypothesis* I absolutely loved, *Bride* was on my top of last year, and today she’s announcing the next one and I’m literally so excited. I already saw on Goodreads it is called *Mate* and I did already click “want to read” so that is already there.
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Loved *Bride* — if you haven’t seen my video on *Bride*, go read *Bride*. So we picked another Ali — yay! This Ali Hazelwood is a sports romance between a swimmer and a diver. Here is the synopsis:
This book is about a girl named Scarlet and she is a diver at Stanford. She is having a very difficult time after a traumatic dive in the past year where she had significant injury and therefore some mental health issues that she’s been kind of working through and dealing with, in addition to some past history that is affecting her season. She’s never really had a lot of close friends — she’s been very focused on her sport, she wants to go to the Olympics — all of these things.
She’s starting on the team this year and trying to make some friends as she’s working through her own sport. She comes across a situation where she ends up befriending a girl on the team who clues her in on something about the friend’s boyfriend (who is now her ex-boyfriend). They basically kind of get set up because they like certain things and they kind of have a friends-with-benefits situation, but obviously we know those never work out.
Star rating — don’t come at me, don’t come at me — I gave Deep End three stars. Okay? I liked the book, I read it very quickly, it was entertaining, but I did have some issues with it. Things that I just… I think I had higher expectations for it in my head because I’ve loved all of Ali’s other books — most of Ali’s other books — and I loved *Bride*. I was coming off of being absolutely obsessed with that book and I think set this one up too high in my head. So I just had some issues which I’ll talk about.
I can’t decide if I’m going to say I’m in the spoiler section or not because I don’t want to spoil things, but this is going to lead into the spice rating. Okay? This is… there’s no ifs, ands, or buts about this — this is fanfiction of *50 Shades of Grey*. We know that most of Ali’s books are fanfiction that she has written over the years that she’s now publishing. *The Love Hypothesis* was fanfiction, the first two I think, and there’s been tons of them. This is *50 Shades* exactly. Like… this is *50 Shades*. It very much read like *50 Shades*, and because of that I just… I wanted more.
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We know if you know me — I love Christian Grey. I love Christian Grey. And I know *50 Shades* was originally *Twilight* fanfiction so we’re not going to go into that. But I wanted it to be different in some way besides just they’re in college and they’re in sports than the *50 Shades* story. I was like “Oh look, here’s Elena. Oh look, here’s Jack.” Oh look, here’s the… it just kind of was *50 Shades*. I wish it was a little different, just a little bit different.
I did love the characters. Okay? I loved Lucas and I loved Scarlet. I do think that there were some things that tied up a little quickly in the end. I do think that there were some things that didn’t really super make sense to me with the way the plot was. And I did have a struggle with rooting for a relationship that… I’m trying to not spoil… was not entirely transparent is the way I’ll say it. Trying not to spoil it.
So like I said, there were issues with just wanting it to be more than just an exact reiteration of *50 Shades* and wanting certain elements that I just… didn’t buy into. But I loved the characters and I loved the mental health rep and I loved the sports. There were parts about it that I really loved, but then there were parts about it that I was just like “I can’t get behind this.”
In regards to the spice — because it is *50 Shades* — the spice rating is a four. It is high in spice. It is *50 Shades*. I’m not going to say the other four letters on YouTube but it is *50 Shades of Grey*. But it was a softer version I felt of *50 Shades of Grey*. I was expecting more from those four letters (the first one is a B if you know what I mean). I was expecting more of that once I figured out that was the huge plot point. Once I saw that it was a *50 Shades* fanfic… it was not that. It was a lot of the having one person in charge and having one person not in charge dynamic a little bit more than the other things that we saw in *50 Shades*. But it’s still, because of that element, it still was a four. There still was a lot of spice. The spice was still good, but it was there.
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Overall, I liked the book. I wish there was more, but I also loved certain parts of it. It stuck with a three for me. Stuck with a three. Still would recommend it to people. Like if people like Ali, if people like quick reads, if people like sports romances — still would highly recommend. Highly recommend. Just because I gave it a three doesn’t mean I wouldn’t recommend it.
I’m very excited about *Mate*. I’m very excited about *Mate*. One of the other things that I did want to say about the book itself specifically was it is a little bit of a heftier Ali Hazelwood book. I think it’s almost 450 pages almost, which made it very heavy. But then also the edition that I got, which is the special edition with the water edges, it has artwork on the inside cover of both which is beautiful — like it matches the cover, it’s beautiful, love it — it made it very hard for me to read the book because I couldn’t hold it open because the cover was so thick and so firm that I just… it made my hand really tired and I was having trouble reading the physical book. So if you really want the physical book, go for it, but if you are like me and your hand gets exhausted when you’re holding books… I was not expecting that to happen but it did. So I just kind of wanted to warn people.
Okay, I’m going to talk about spoilers now because I feel like I have to explain the things that I hinted at for all of us girlies who have already read it slash are here for Funsize Book Club. So here we go. If you have not read the book, I’m going to talk about spoilers now. Now. Right now.
Hello everyone, I hope you liked the book at least as much or more than I did. Okay? I hope… I hope there was nobody that didn’t like it because I still do love Ali’s books. But let’s talk about this.
Okay, like I said, I loved the characters. I really liked Scarlet, I really liked Lucas. I liked that he was a strong, quiet but very direct and very… knows what he wants, secretly in love with her for a long time. I loved all of those things about him. I loved that he was very into helping Scarlet with her sport and he was an intense athlete and all of this.
They did not spend enough time together in Deep End. Like that was one of my biggest complaints. I felt like they were constantly apart. We had the times that they were together but there weren’t that many. In a romance, especially because Christian Grey never wanted to let Ana leave his side, I expected them to be all the time together and I didn’t get that. So that was one of the big things that stuck out to me that I was just like… I wanted them together more. I wanted more scenes of them interacting. And this constant dodging each other in public…
And this was one of the things that I truly could not buy into: why am I rooting for a romance between two people when one of them is still faking a relationship with someone else who set them up to begin with? And then don’t even get me started on her… Penn? Was Penn her name? Yeah, Penn. Elena. Like you can’t have your cake and eat it too. You can’t set him up with somebody else, break up with him, go be with someone else — multiple other people — and then get mad that they’re together and make it so that they can’t even interact with each other in public. I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that at all.
It made it very hard for me to, like I said, root for the relationship when they were keeping it a secret because he was still pretending to be somebody else’s boyfriend. I didn’t like that part about his character. And I get it that it was like “Oh, we owe her for how she helped me and I have a love for her because of how she helped me,” but like… you’re not in love with her anymore, you’re not dating her anymore, she’s with someone else — why are you still pretending to be together? Didn’t like that.
Also just ended up really not liking Penn, and I almost wanted them to not be friends at the end when Penn was kind of throwing her little hissy fit and took away her Olympic moment (or her championship moment, her gold medal moment). And I was like “I kind of just don’t want them to be friends.” Like I understand the forgiveness and her writing her wrongs and apologizing and all of this stuff, but I almost wanted it to go the other way. And I don’t know, maybe that’s just the side of me, but I almost wanted it to go the other way.
Okay, so when we were talking about the four letters (the B and then the other ones), I had a very specific expectation based on the art on the inside of the book of how I thought this was going to go, especially with the progression of her mental health and her interest in this kink. I personally thought that it was going to be more of a… she took control or took charge in one area of her life and he helped her do that, and then that helped her overcome these blocks — mental blocks — that she was having and take charge in the other side of her life.
And there was this art at the end that made me think that, and so when that didn’t really happen I was confused. I was looking… the whole book to me is an entire piece of a whole thing that goes together. So things that go into a book I always feel are intentional. I anticipated that as what the story was going to be because of the art that was chosen. Like it was like “Okay, well in the beginning it’s him and then in the end it’s her,” and so I was like “Okay, well yeah, like he helps her overcome this stuff that she’s dealing with and going through,” and that didn’t happen. So I was slightly confused at that — like why those choices were made for the art that didn’t really fit exactly with the story. So I don’t know, that’s just me overthinking things in a book too much.
I did really like how obsessed he was with her. We love an obsessed main character, just saying. We do. I thought the end was cute — they ended up going to school together and all of that. Like I did really like the characters in Deep End. I liked how… I mean this was straight out of Christian Grey’s book, but the “Oh no, I never sleep over at his house,” and then she’s the only one that has slept over at his house and he’s a big physical touch cuddler and all of that. I always think that’s cute when they do something with the romantic interest that they don’t do with anybody else. I always think that’s cute. But again, that’s straight out of Christian Grey.
I did agree or like I said before that the *50 Shades* element (the B and three letters) was not as much as we saw in *50 Shades*. Definitely not as much. Like I was expecting when this was the whole premise and that’s what they got together for, that it was going to be way elevated. I was worried that it was going to be out of my comfort zone of reading because I love *50 Shades*. I’ve loved that book for very many years, so I’ve read that before and I anticipated that it was going to be way more. It was not, and I was just like “Huh, okay, well that was interesting.” For it being such a big plot point, I thought that was soft.
And I will say this one thing that… I don’t know, maybe I’m just not a collegiate/professional diver, whatever, but do people still use the word “twit”? Am I that old? Because that was one of the things that really tipped me off to it for sure being an older manuscript was… we don’t say “twit” anymore. And that was in the book very many times. I was like “Yeah, like in 2008 when *50 Shades* came out, yeah we were saying ‘twit’.” I was in high school, but yeah, no, not now. And Deep End came out now, so yeah. I just thought that was funny. I had to say that. I was like “Did anybody else notice that?”
Were there other things that anybody noticed that were like took you back in time? Because I noticed that. But again, I was reading *50 Shades* when it came out, so took me back in time.
Anyways, I liked it. I enjoyed it. I hope you guys did too. I had issues with it, but it’s… I still read it in a day. I still don’t regret reading it. I would still recommend it to people. Did I love it as much as *Bride*? No. Did I love it as much as *Love Hypothesis*? No. Oh, I did like that those characters did make an appearance — that’s always fun. She definitely wrote those into here. Don’t regret it. Will keep reading. Very excited for *Mate* in October.
Thanks so much for all of you coming and talking with me today. You all know that I tend to run out of time because I don’t remember how long my videos are going to be and it doesn’t show the time when we’re watching them live, so I forget to say thank you and all of that and then I rush out of the room. So anyways, thank you for coming, thank you for reading along this month, thank you for chatting with me, thank you for showing up today. Or if you’re watching this later, thank you for watching it later.
Make sure to stay tuned for the next month’s pick video. Hopefully I redirected it properly this time — last time I didn’t, so sorry about that. If you like fantasy and romance books, I post reviews on my channel weekly when I remember and have time to edit them.
Source:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHBmu5Bumao&pp=ygUUZGVlcCBlbmQgYm9vayByZXZpZXc%3D
