Book Blog #365: Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

 

Title: Deep End

Author: Ali Hazelwood

# of Pages: 464 (ebook)

Genre: Adult, Romance, Contemporary

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Synopsis: 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.

Review: I've read two Ali Hazelwood before this, but this is my intro to her contemporary romance writing (which I heard was better than her paranormal romance).

It wasn't. 

One of the characters in this book kept saying that Scarlett's kinks are "so Fifty Shades!" (since she's into the dom/sub aspect of BDSM). This essentially set the stage for the rest of the book; it felt like a watered down Fifty Shades of Grey. There was a lot of smut, but it actually wasn't that kinky and a bit boring, honestly. I thought that they would explore more of the kinks they supposedly shared, but it was mostly just him telling her what to do and her crying because she liked it so much. 

There's no depth in the relationship between the two main characters. It's fine to have two characters bond over shared kinks, but it's hard to call this true romance when they don't seem to do much together except want to have sex, and all their emotions seems to be based off the greatness of their sex lives. The dom/sub kink seemed to be their whole personality, the defining feature who makes them who they are. I would have preferred more nuance to their characters.

And of course I was constantly frustrated with the plot because most of the problems fall under the poor communication trope! These characters will just choose to not talk to each other for long stretches of time, another character wants to withhold information about a breakup and keep up the facade of being a couple (oh what could go wrong?)... 

Usually with this trashy, smutty romance books, it'll be at least a fast read. However, this was not the case for Deep End; had to really push through the beginning half especially when it felt like very little of anything was happening. 

I would not recommend this book.

Book Blog #364: Mate by Ali Hazelwood

 

Title: Mate

Author: Ali Hazelwood

# of Pages: 457 (ebook)

Genre: Adult, Paranormal Romance, Fantasy

Rating: ★★☆☆☆

Synopsis: Serena Paris is orphaned, pack-less, and one of a kind. Coming forward as the first Human-Were hybrid was supposed to heal a centuries-long rift between species. Instead, it made her a target, prey to the ruthless political machinations between Weres, Vampyres, and Humans. With her enemies closing in on her, she has only one option left—if he’ll have her. As Alpha of the Northwest pack, Koen Alexander commands obedience. His authority is so absolute, only a fool would threaten his mate. It doesn’t matter if Serena doesn’t reciprocate his feelings, nothing will stop him from keeping her safe. But power-hungry Vampyres and Weres are not the only threats chasing Serena. Sooner or later, her past is bound to catch up with her—and Koen might be the only thing standing between her and total annihilation…

Review: Not as good as Bride, unfortunately. It has the same addictive quality, but not as much. 

Bride already had its flaws, and Mate fixes some of these but introduces others. Serena and Koen actually spend more time together compared to Misery and Lowe (so the former's relationship feels more authentic). 

At the same time, Koen is a problematic male protagonist that makes me not want to root in the Serena x Koen situationship. He seemed blunt and cocky, but his confidence and charisma was still likable in Bride. But in Mate, his sarcasm and attitude toward Serena was super off-putting. It felt like the only reason why he cared about her at all is because she's his mate (rather than caring about her as a person). There's also the big age difference, which sometimes could be a non-issue, but Koen's (unlike Lowe's) Alpha personality came off as infantilizing (especially when Serena is new to all things Were). 

A lot of the problems the characters encounter come from character withholding information from each other.  Pretty tired of this poor communication trope and made me frustrated with Serena especially.

This could have been a three star read like Bride, but since I didn't love the Serena and Koen relationship as much as Misery and Lowe, I'm deducting a star. I'd only recommend reading this is if you already loved Bride.