Reviews tagging 'Toxic friendship'

Deep End by Ali Hazelwood

203 reviews

emotional funny lighthearted medium-paced

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emotional hopeful medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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funny fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I have a love/hate relationship with Ali Hazelwood’s books. Her writing style is funny and easy to binge, but I find myself wishing she could dig a little deeper into the situations her characters find themselves in.

I found myself relating to this FMC more than her others. The banter in this book is A+, and the secret relationship trope is one of my favorites. My biggest con would be the lack of information/general education that should be included when a D/s dynamic is present. 

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challenging emotional funny hopeful tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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challenging dark emotional inspiring reflective sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

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Is it me or have a lot of contemporary/romcoms lately had MMCs who were pieces of shit? 

He fell for you and wanted you as a third while dating your “closest” friend???? And then continued to prioritize her while sleeping with/dating you???? I would be doing hard time if man ever tried that with me. 

I’m really supposed to root for someone who emotionally cheated during a large part of their previous relationship, and wasn’t even the one to break it up??? May this love never find me.

#bringbackgoodmeninromcoms2025

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adventurous challenging dark emotional funny hopeful informative inspiring reflective tense medium-paced

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emotional funny lighthearted fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I will be cautious about who I recommend this book to. It's explicit and it's not going to be liked by everyone. Read trigger warnings if that's your concern.

However, I adored the characters so much. Any time I thought of an excuse to drop the rating, I realized how it was actually a dumb reason and can't count as a negative because it was [insert reason].

The MMC is an adorable Swedish man who is caring and patient towards the FMC. Ali Hazelwood keeps up her science-themed romances, and in a year where I'm focusing on learning languages, it was fun to have a second culture added into the mix.

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lighthearted fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
emotional funny inspiring lighthearted reflective medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

This was my least favorite Hazelwood book so far… part of me wants to rate it lower, but I did chuckle and feel things and more or less liked some of the characters…

Overall- this whole story felt trite.  And forced.

I liked the roommate the best. Who was literally barely in the book.

 The self loathing seemed over done by…. A lot. And it did not feel warranted.

It was all overdone and flat at the same time. 

The spice level is highish but still wasn’t a huge fan. She used the C word aggressively and in a romcom it’s not my vibe and I was eye-rolling hard. 

I have so many negative feelings about this book that it’s hard to narrow them down and make sense of them all.

The pace was weird and again, the characters just felt bleh? 

I’m just annoyed because her other books have been 4-5 stars…. So I don’t know what happened but I am disappointed. 

The BEST part is that this book is set in the same world as Love Hypothesis and you get to have a little bit of Dr. Adam Carlson again.

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