Author: Ali Hazelwood.
Year: 2025.
Genre: Sports Romance, Adult Contemporary.
Rate: 1 Stars. ⭐😒
About:
“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.
Swim captain, world champion, all-around aquatics golden boy, Lukas Blomqvist thrives on discipline. It’s how he wins gold medals and breaks records: complete focus, with every stroke. On the surface, Lukas and Scarlett have nothing in common. Until a well-guarded secret slips out, and everything changes.
So, they start an arrangement. And as the pressure leading to the Olympics heats up, so does their relationship. It was supposed to be just a temporary, mutually satisfying fling. But when staying away from Lukas becomes impossible, Scarlett realizes that her heart might be treading into dangerous water...”
Review:
Prepare yourselves for the most unpopular opinion I’ve ever written.
First, I want to say that I took a few weeks and a reread to evaluate if my opinion about the book was something related to the moment when I read it, or if it was in fact, as it is, what the book made me feel.
Here I go then;
After reading mostly other books by Hazelwood, she turned into the kind of author I buy the book first and ask questions later, that is how much I enjoyed her stories, they’re heartfelt, funny, and complex, a rollercoaster that I jumped in without second thoughts. Therefore, it was logical to be beyond excited with this new release, despite the BDSM part of the romance/plot, which is something that I’m not interested in reading, however, I put it aside in order to enjoy everything else.
It didn’t happen... the enjoyment part,
The book is well written with a good pace and that’s it… the rest of it is a mess.
Scarlet, the FMC is described as this super archiver, strong heroine and she is more like a whiny loser. One thing is how the character is seen by the world and the other is how the character feels inside, the inner thoughts conflict for the reader to understand and follow the development, and that was the problem, as a reader I saw how Scarlett was far from be amazing, in fact, she was pretty much a TSTL, totally annoying, especially in the way she behaved to accommodate her -out of the blue- best friend who resulted to be the biggest bitch (and I don’t like to use this word but I couldn’t find something more accurate) of all without thinking in her or Lukas the MMC.
Same with Lucas… Okay, I liked him a little more than the FMC but the fact that he accommodated her ex-girlfriend's needs didn’t talk much about having control (which is supposed to be one of the main characteristics of his personality)… so, another disappointment.
Moving on, we have my biggest pet peeve, repetitions: I get it’s part of the plot but the constant use of the word ‘kink’ and things like ‘people like us’ changed my mood for the worst.
Now, there is the ‘whole best friends’ thing… What the heck? How in this world a person is going to miss the most important ceremony of her life just because the so-called friend is jealous of her success? Here is a clue, that is not a friend, that is a toxic relationship, and that is why bothered me so much that after everything that happened when finally the protagonist overcame her fears, she let herself lose everything, and after that to do that irrational fast forgiveness (insert eyes rolls in here.)
The romance part: (More eyes roll here) There is zero chemistry between the characters, and the sexual encounter makes me cringe a few times.
Even the epilogue which is my favorite part of any book, wasn’t the best. I did like it was from Lukas's POV also the fact that it seems they have been years together, but I didn’t like the content of it.
Although the cover is beautiful it will look pretty in my bookshelves, on the other hand when I see it, I’ll remember how disappointed I am with this story.
-Sighs- I feel like I told the truth to a best friend that she looks horrible in her dress on her wedding day.
I’m still in shock and frustrated, honestly, I don’t know what happened here…
I think I have to re-read my favorite books to wipe out the bitter taste that this book left on me.
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