Rowena’s review of Deeper by Blue Ashcroft.
Rain Wilson isn’t ever going to love again.
It’s a promise she made the day her boyfriend died in a water park accident, one she still blames herself for. Now she’s a senior lifeguard in a new town with a new pool and she’s just going to keep her head down and everyone safe.
Until a mysterious guy follows her into the waves at the pre-season bonfire and kisses her senseless. It’s just one mistake, and Rain is determined to put it behind her, until the dark haired, blue eyed hottie turns out to be her new co-supervisor Knight Mcallister.
Knight is hot, tatted, and carrying baggage of his own. He’s not happy about having Rain for a co-supervisor, and he’s even less happy about his attraction to her.
But between lifeguard drama, hot underwater kisses, and a growing attraction between them that can’t be stopped, Knight and Rain are being pulled deeper into their pasts, and realizing that sometimes too much broken can make a relationship impossible.
Then again sometimes it’s the broken parts of us that fit together best.
New Adult seems to be my thing these days and this was one of the books that I read in the last few weeks. I’m going to be honest and put it out that I didn’t think that I would enjoy this book at all but that turned out to not be the case. Now, I didn’t love this book so much that I want to marry it and have its babies but I did enjoy it.
This book follows two young adults that are suffering from issues of their dead loved ones. Well, Knight’s loved one and Rain’s something more than friend. It was interesting seeing these two come together. They were so full of angst all the time and most of that time, I wanted to strangle one or the other with how dumb they were. But I can’t say that I didn’t enjoy that they finally came together in the end.
Knight is suffering from holding himself responsible for his girlfriend’s death. He can’t seem to get over the fact that he should have been there. If he had been there, she wouldn’t have died. He would have protected her and since he wasn’t, he has to live with the fact that they fought the night she died and he lived. Rain blames herself for the death of one of the lifeguards death over at the water park she used to work at. His name was Will and he had a thing for her and they had an understanding, she was going to go for it with him but then she let go of the lifeguard chain and Will went flying, falling to his death. Now, Rain is holding herself apart from everything and everyone and she’s not letting herself live anymore to atone for Will’s death.
Both characters grieved and processed the events of their lives in different ways. Rain closed herself off from everything and everyone while Knight flirted and slept around, holding himself emotionally closed off from everyone. When they meet each other, the attraction is strong but Rain wasn’t about to let it go further than an explosive kiss on the beach on the night they first meet.
For me, both Knight and Rain were hard characters to warm up to. Rain and her insistence of keeping her distance from everything and everyone got old after a while of the hot/cold thing with Knight but then Knight’s overwhelming protectiveness toward Rain made me roll my eyes too.
Overall, I liked the book. I came to like both Knight and Rain in the end and found their story to be complicated but solid. It wasn’t my favorite book of all time but it was still an interesting way to spend a few hours.
Grade: 3 out of 5
This book is available from Blue Ashcroft. You can purchase it here or here in e-format. This book was provided by the publisher in exchange for an honest review.
