Publisher: Piatkus
Release: 6th March 2014
Genre: New Adult, Romance, Contemporary
Source: Received from the publisher in exchange for an honest review
Goodreads Synopsis:
"When Caroline Piasecki's ex-boyfriend posts their sex pictures on the Internet, it destroys her reputation as a nice college girl. Suddenly her once-promising future doesn't look so bright. Caroline tries to make the pictures disappear; hoping time will bury her shame. Then a guy she barely knows rises to her defence and punches her ex to the ground.
West Leavitt is the last person Caroline needs in her life. Everyone knows he's shady. Still, Caroline is drawn to his confidence and swagger - even after promising her dad she'll keep her distance. On late, sleepless nights, Caroline starts wandering into the bakery where West works.
They hang out, they talk, they listen. Though Caroline and West tell each other they're 'just friends,' their feelings intensify until it becomes impossible to pretend. The more complicated her relationship with West gets, the harder Caroline has to struggle to discover what she wants for herself - and the easier it becomes to find the courage she needs to fight back against the people who would judge her.
When all seems lost, sometimes the only place to go is deeper."
Review
Deeper follows a similar formula to other New Adult books with the whole good girl falls for bad boy storyline yet the characters are more diverse than that. Caroline and West had both good and bad traits which is something I always enjoy and appreciate in my characters.
Caroline and West live opposite lives but manage to meet somewhere in the middle after Caroline’s ex-boyfriend posts naked pictures of her online and West is one of the few people to not treat her differently or judge her. One of the things I really enjoyed about Deeper was that Caroline and West really get to know each other and spend a lot of time together first before jumping into a relationship.
Unfortunately things are not smooth sailing for Caroline and West. West is the main provider for his family and works several jobs as well as attend college to get him and his family by. West is determined to better his life and wants nothing to distract him from that goal which means that he’ll often push Caroline away. Caroline and West would constantly put barriers up that didn’t need to be there and there was a lot of unnecessary drama at times meaning that I’d often get frustrated with them as a couple and so I wasn’t always 100% behind them which was a shame.
Hands down my favourite thing about Deeper was Caroline and her journey. Caroline is deeply damaged at the start of the book with her confidence and future in shreds after her pictures turn up online but as the book goes on she decides not to be a victim anymore and I was so proud of how strong she became. Reading about Caroline’s experiences with revenge porn was actually my favourite thing about this book and the author delivers some important messages about female empowerment and sexuality.
Although I did have a couple of problems with Deeper overall I did enjoy reading it and appreciated the unique themes and important messages it brought to the New Adult genre.
