In at the Deep End by Kate Davies

In at the Deep End by Kate Davies

Available June 4, 2019

This is one hot and steamy novel!  It opens with the narrator, Julia, lamenting about the lack of sex in her life and her reliance on herself and vibrators to fill that void.  So, fair warning. This is explicit so if that’s not your jam, maybe give this one a pass.

Back to Julia.  

Julia is in her 20s and tired of being alone or in lackluster relationships.  Her roommates have been in a long term stable relationship and listening to their frequent and enthusiastic love life through the thin apartment walls is getting to be too much.  After having a disappointing sexual encounter with a man she met at a party, Julia is traumatized and can’t think of having sex with anyone any time soon. Also, this scene is so incredibly cringe-worthy I almost couldn’t get through it.  It’s wild.

While at a warehouse party with her roommates, Julia meets Jane, a confident and assertive artist who gives Julia her first kiss by a woman. She also gives Julia a whole list of firsts.  

Julia then goes on a journey of self-discovery and acceptance of her feelings and desires.  Through Jane, Julia meets Sam, another artist who has nude paintings of her former lovers lining her apartment walls.  Julia and Sam begin a tumultuous relationship full of amazing sex, fetish parties, and a wide variety of friends and lovers.  WIth former lovers still in the picture, role-playing that goes too far, and fights over their relationship status and boundaries, Julia learns to love herself first before she can learn to truly love anyone else.  

This novel read very much like a hilarious and heartbreaking how-to guide to relationships.  Kate Davies goes into explicit detail of each and every sexual act and slang term she writes.  It began to seem, in a very good way, that I should have been taking notes. So much of this book was spent both laughing hysterically and crying over Julia’s ups and downs.  I really thought this book was going to be a funny and lighthearted sex-filled romp. What it really is a deep dive into abusive and controlling relationships and how easy it is to brush off and explain away controlling behaviors.  Davies does an excellent job of showing how easily Julia was taken advantage of by her inexperience and her desire to be in a loving relationship.

I absolutely loved this book.  This is Kate Davies’ debut which is amazing because it’s so incredibly well-written. I can’t wait to see what she gives us in the future.

If you would like to grab a copy for yourself, and help support the site, you can get one here: