Deeper: A Novel

by Robin York Narrated by Mike Chamberlain, Lynde Houck

Overview

NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY LIBRARY JOURNAL

In Robin York's sizzling debut, a college student is attacked online and must restore her name-and stay clear of a guy who's wrong for her, but feels so right.
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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 defense and punches her ex to the ground.
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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.
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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.
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When all seems lost, sometimes the only place to go is deeper.

Praise for Deeper

“York's beautiful prose and vivid descriptions enhance the realism and impact of Caroline and West's story. Deeper and Harder are sensual and profoundly moving. The books are told in first-person from both Caroline's and West's POVs, and I sat on the emotional roller coaster right beside them as West learns to hold tight to Caroline and embrace life to the fullest. . . . They are books I will cherish.”-Lea Franczak, USA Today

“Deeper perfectly captured me. Robin York masterfully tells this story with the perfect balance in tone and realistic characters that I'm still thinking about days later. One of the best written New Adult novels, hands down!”-Cora Carmack, New York Times bestselling author of Losing It
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“Bursting with chemistry, emotion, and heart, Caroline and West's story will take your breath away!”-Katy Evans, New York Times bestselling author of the REAL series
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“The perfect New Adult story. West will make you swoon!”-New York Times bestselling author Monica Murphy
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“Beautifully written and full of swoony tender moments, toe-curling chemistry, and delicious, twisty angst . . . Stop whatever you're doing and read this book.”-Christina Lauren, author of the Beautiful Bastard series

Editorial Reviews

JUNE 2014 - AudioFile

Narrators Lynde Houck and Mike Chamberlain offer stirring and heartfelt performances that convey the intensity of this new adult romance. Houck’s rich tones and precise diction add a biting sharpness to her narration, especially in her portrayal of college student Caroline’s humiliation and anger when she must cope with harassment after her ex-boyfriend posts pornographic photos of her on the Internet. Though Chamberlain’s voice lacks the depth of Houck’s, his timing and intonation convey the conflict in West, Caroline’s love interest, as well as West’s tenderness towards his little sister and his mother’s blind love for her abusive husband. Together, Houck and Chamberlain match the pacing of their narration to create the sexual tension between the two protagonists. M.F. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine

From the Publisher

[Robin] York’s beautiful prose and vivid descriptions enhance the realism and impact of Caroline and West’s story. Deeper and Harder are sensual and profoundly moving. The books are told in first-person from both Caroline’s and West’s POVs, and I sat on the emotional roller coaster right beside them as West learns to hold tight to Caroline and embrace life to the fullest. . . . They are books I will cherish.”—Lea Franczak, USA Today

“Deeper perfectly captured me. Robin York masterfully tells this story with the perfect balance in tone and realistic characters that I’m still thinking about days later. One of the best written New Adult novels, hands down!”—Cora Carmack, New York Times bestselling author of Losing It
 
“Bursting with chemistry, emotion, and heart, Caroline and West’s story will take your breath away!”—Katy Evans, New York Times bestselling author of the REAL series
 
“The perfect New Adult story. West will make you swoon!”—New York Times bestselling author Monica Murphy
 
“Beautifully written and full of swoony tender moments, toe-curling chemistry, and delicious, twisty angst . . . Stop whatever you’re doing and read this book.”—Christina Lauren, author of the Beautiful Bastard series

“If you’re looking for a story that is beautifully written but tackles a tough issue, a story that is filled with some swoon worthy moments and wonderful chemistry, a story that has some angst and sadness wrapped in a story of love and friendship, then you need to pick up Deeper.”—Fiction Fare
 
“It is very difficult for me to articulate all the things that I want to say about this book because I love it so much. . . . [It’s] scorchingly hot, and the chemistry between these characters is nothing short of explosive. If you’ve read anything by Ruthie Knox before, you know she can turn a phrase, but Deeper takes that to another level. I don’t think I’ve ever read anything where every single word holds such power. . . . Everything about this book is perfection—the words, the characters, the swoon, the boy. Just trust me and read it. I know you’ll love it!”—Steamy Guys After Dark
 
“If reviews could be one word this one would be beautiful! This book blew me away. The plot was heartfelt and realistic. The reactions were real. The emotions pulled at my heart strings. The characters were spot on. Deeper has the right amount of angst, drama, emotion, and romance. . . . I can’t wait for more of Caroline and West!”—BS Book Reviewers
 
“This is the kind of book everyone needs to read a least once. It’s beautiful, sexy, touching and sad and it’s everything I could ever hope for in a book. Deeper is by far one of my favorite books of the year and I know by the end of this year, it still will be fresh on my mind.”—Anna’s Book Blog
 
“If you’re looking for a spectacularly NA angst and friendship turned romance, with a fantastic plot, beautiful and deep characters, and are willing to invest yourself emotionally in a genuinely real story, get Deeper.”—The Book Hammock
 
“Deeper blew me away. I was hooked from the first page. I laughed, I cried, I cursed and neglected pretty much everything while I finished it. Most importantly I cheered that York could take on a subject so serious and relevant, combine it with some truly unique and interesting characters, and end up with a book that was so engaging and emotional.”—Twin Spin
 
“What a fantastic read! . . . I loved how real everything felt, the talks, the overnight baking sessions, the uneasy emotional pull and push and even extremely hot sex. Add to it West’s family situation with absolutely no easy way to shed his problems, and Caroline’s fight to reclaim her identity, finish it off with a heart-wrenching ending, and you have one powerful read.”—Noctural Book Reviews
 
“Holy wow. Robin York impressed me so much with Deeper. . . . Caroline and West’s relationship is as hot as summer. Maybe even hotter. There’s some serious sexual tension and chemistry here. . . . The romance is passionate and all-consuming and you can’t help but fall just as deep as Caroline and West did. . . . York’s story is extremely powerful and the writing is terrific. . . . Gorgeously gripping and sexy, Deeper is a book New Adult fans wouldn’t want to miss!”—Stay Bookish
 
“I would highly recommend this book to all of my romance junkie friends. . . . I’d give it more than five stars if I could!”—Reading Haven
 
“I was blown away by this story. . . . My heart ached at times during this journey, but the ending couldn’t have set up the next in the series more perfectly. I cannot wait for book two in Caroline and West’s story.”—Her Juicy Reads

Product Details

BN ID:	2940171816704
Publisher:	Penguin Random House
Publication date:	01/28/2014
Series:	Caroline & West , #1
Edition description:	Unabridged

Read an Excerpt

BEFORE

Sometimes I hate the girl I was back then. It’s like how, when you see a horror movie, you can’t help but feel contempt for the virgin who goes for a walk in the woods after midnight. How can she be so stupid? Doesn’t she know she’s about to get gruesomely hacked to death?

She should know. That’s why it’s so hard to watch. Because you want her to know. You want her to defend herself, and you look down on her for not knowing, even though obviously it’s the guy who hacks her up who’s at fault.

The thing is, the movie makes him seem like a force of nature—unstoppable—so the virgin comes off as a total dumb-ass for not checking the forecast to see if it calls for serial murder before she skips off into the night.

These days, if someone sent me a text that said nothing but OMG, I wouldn’t wonder if whatever I was about to find out was going to be bad. I’d only wonder how bad and how long it was going to take me to crawl out of whatever pit I was about to fall in. But in August of my sophomore year at Putnam College, I didn’t worry. I thought maybe Bridget, my best friend and roommate, had gotten distracted before she could finish her train of thought.

I towel-dried my hair and stood up to lob the damp towel into my laundry basket in the closet. Missed. By the time I’d picked it up and put it where it belonged, another message had popped up on my phone, this time with a link.

You need to see this, it said.

And then, immediately after, I’m so sorry.

I clicked the link.

I think part of me knew even then. Because the thing about being a good girl is, you spend your whole life developing a finely honed radar for detecting anything that could potentially cause people to love you less.

Girls like me—or, I guess, girls like the one I was last August—we eat approval. We live for it. So when we do something dumb—or, say, when we do something really monumentally idiotic—we know.

The screen filled up with a picture of me, topless, with Nate’s dick in my mouth.

I looked, and I took a deep breath. I closed my eyes.

I could actually feel it—the solid ground of my life, cracking open.

It sounds too drama llama when I put it like that, I know, but I can’t think of another way to describe it. One minute, I was on firm footing—a nineteen-year-old overachieving politics geek, on track to go to law school and take the world by storm—and the next, my feet had lost purchase on the floor. I sagged against the desk. I couldn’t get enough air.

The shock of it didn’t take any time at all to sink in. It sank in immediately, traveling some kind of shortcut path from my eyes to the area of my brain that had made a quiet, private list of the consequences of those photos the second Nate took them.

Everyone will see you, mock you, hate you.

You won’t get into law school.

You’ll never get a Rhodes.

You’ll never be a judge or get elected to office.

This changes everything.

Seeing those pictures—I was devastated. Immediately. Because I’d known.

That night when I’d gone down on Nate and he’d lifted his iPhone in the air and aimed it at my head, my good-girl radar was working fine. Bad idea, the radar told me. Such a bad idea. But I overrode it, because Nate was in a mood, and I thought if I went along, it would bring him out of it.

You trust him, I told myself. Nate would never.

But he did. He must have. The website identified me as Caroline Piasecki from Putnam, Iowa, and Nate was the only one who had those pictures. Either he put them there, or he gave them to someone who did.

There were two shots of my face smiling. One duckface from my car that I’d sent him just to be an ass. One of me in my favorite animal-print bra and panties, which I’d taken in the mirror in my high school bedroom, sucking in my stomach and pushing out my chest because I’d wanted to look sexy. I’d wanted so much to be sexy for him.

And the other, even dirtier pictures. The ones I almost couldn’t look at.

Three of them.

At the bottom, my face again, with a cartoon bubble that said, I’m Caroline Piasecki! I’m a frigid bitch who needs to get FUCKED!!!

I couldn’t cry.

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t really believe it.

The page had four hundred sixty-two comments.

Four. Hundred. Sixty. Two.

If someone had asked me ten minutes earlier how I felt about Nate, I would have told them, “Oh, there are no hard feelings.” Three years together, and we’d just grown apart. I guess it was college that did it. By the end of our freshman year, I’d started to feel like maybe Nate and I didn’t have all that much in common. In high school, I’d been dateless until he asked me out—a late bloomer, my dad said. Nate was cute, popular, smart. Flattering to be noticed by a boy like that. But at Putnam, I had started to think maybe there was something missing between him and me. Better chemistry. A deeper connection.

I’d broken up with him before we came back to school. We shared a pizza and drank soda, and I tried to explain my reasoning without hurting his feelings. I thought I had pulled it off pretty well. By the end of dinner, he’d been smiling and agreeable again.

I would have said he was a nice guy. That we were still friends.

So even though I wasn’t exactly surprised, I was, too. I’d followed the rules, worked hard to get good grades, dated a nice boy, and made him wait a long time for sex. This wasn’t supposed to happen. I hadn’t expected my prom date, my first boyfriend, my first, to use the Internet to call me a cum-loving slut who loves jizz in her face or to list the name of my college and my high school right there beneath the blow-job picture.

Because who expects that?

I sank down into the desk chair and thumbed through the first few screens of comments. Then the next few. Screen after screen.

She has nice tits.

I’d hit that.

*fap fap fap fap thx Carolina, you hoor!*

What an ugly slut. I want more vag!

Every word I read—every filthy thing some basement-dwelling Internet creep said about me—I thought, This is my fault.

My fault, my fault, my fault.

I never should have let Nate take the pictures. I knew it. I knew it when he took them, I knew it after, I knew it when we broke up and I had this fleeting, urgent impulse to beg him to let me delete every single photo of me off his phone. An impulse I shrugged off because I didn’t want to offend him.

I didn’t want to be rude.

I sat there for a long time, scrolling and reading, wiping tears from my eyes with the back of my free hand. I was panting more than breathing, panicking more than thinking, too disoriented to have anything like a coherent plan.

I think I was mourning the end of something without even knowing it had ended. My youth, maybe. The sunny, perfect part of my life.

It wasn’t until Bridget messaged me again—R u ok?—that I really understood. I thought about how she would come back to the room and she would have seen. She would know, and I would have to face her.

I thought about how it wouldn’t be just Bridget. It would be everybody.

That’s when it hit me that I would never be okay again.

SEPTEMBER

Caroline

Two and a half weeks after the photos appear online, I have everything under control. Right up until I walk out of Latin and into West Leavitt’s elbow.

I’m striding with my head down, my mind on the upcoming student-senate election. I thought I would run this year to represent my dorm, but now I don’t see how I can. The girl who is running is . . . Well, I’m trying not to be uncharitable. She’s not my top choice.

I’m my top choice.

My feet are moving out the door and steering me to the right, away from most of the other students. I used to go to the left, but Nate has Macroeconomics in the classroom next to mine, and I don’t want to run into him. I’ve started going right instead and then detouring around the outside of the building to head toward the dining hall for lunch.

Today, though, my path isn’t empty—the hallway is crowded, heaving and alive. But since I’ve got my head down, I don’t notice until I crash into some random person’s back. The bag I’m carrying gets knocked out of my arms and onto the floor. I go to pick it up, saying sorry, noticing just how many legs are in this hall, starting to wonder what’s going on. I’m still trying to figure it out when I stand back up and get nailed in the nose.

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