Deep End

Bestseller Hazelwood (The Love Hypothesis) spins a kinky, character-driven new adult romance. After star diver Scarlett Vandermeer, a junior at Stanford, is seriously injured during a competition, she fights to recover the fearless spirit that made her an athletic standout. Her best friend, Pen, has recently broken up with Swedish senior Lukas “Luk” Blomqvist, an Olympic swimming champion, and drunkenly confides to Scarlett that they were sexually incompatible due to Luk’s interest in BDSM. With Pen’s blessing, Scarlett, who is similarly inclined, meets up with Luk to negotiate a no-commitment, dom/sub relationship. The kink is relatively mild, consisting mostly of power exchange, and the pair quickly break their no-strings rule. As they help each other heal the broken bits of themselves, both work to balance their relationship, their athletic ambitions, and their demanding premed majors—until an important competition throws off everyone’s equilibrium. The chemistry between Scarlett and Lukas is volcanic thanks to Hazelwood’s crisp prose and molten-hot sex scenes. The author’s fans will eat this up. Agent: Thao Le, Sandra Dijkstra Literary. (Feb.)