What do you think?
Rate this book
Deep Water
A holiday friendship -- nothing more
That was Charles Ravenscroft's proposal. "No past, no future, simply a fortnight of pleasure."
Anthea wasn't so quick to agree. She was a confident woman now, no longer the impressionable girl who had made Charles the hero of her youthful fantasies. And yet she felt the strange magic of the tropics, to say nothing of the spell cast by Charles himself.
Changed and embittered he might be, but he was still the most attractive man Anthea had ever met... .
That was Charles Ravenscroft's proposal. "No past, no future, simply a fortnight of pleasure."
Anthea wasn't so quick to agree. She was a confident woman now, no longer the impressionable girl who had made Charles the hero of her youthful fantasies. And yet she felt the strange magic of the tropics, to say nothing of the spell cast by Charles himself.
Changed and embittered he might be, but he was still the most attractive man Anthea had ever met... .
- GenresHarlequin Romance
Paperback
First published February 1, 1992
17 people want to read
About the author
Marjorie Lewty
81 books19 followersMarjorie Lewty, née Lobb, was a British writer of short stories and over 45 romance novels from 1958 to 1999 to Mills & Boon.
She studied at Queen Mary High School in Liverpool, but her plans to study sciences at university were thwarted, when her father died. She was forced to take a hated job at secretary of the District Bank Ltd. from 1923 to 1933, when she married with Richard Arthur Lewty, a dental surgeon of Liverpool. They had one son and one daughter. After her marriage she began to write short stories which were published in magazines. In 1958, she sold her first romance novel to Mills & Boon, and her last novel in 1999.
She studied at Queen Mary High School in Liverpool, but her plans to study sciences at university were thwarted, when her father died. She was forced to take a hated job at secretary of the District Bank Ltd. from 1923 to 1933, when she married with Richard Arthur Lewty, a dental surgeon of Liverpool. They had one son and one daughter. After her marriage she began to write short stories which were published in magazines. In 1958, she sold her first romance novel to Mills & Boon, and her last novel in 1999.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
February 21, 2021
Well, this was interesting. The title refers to the deep-water H/h dove in around the Cayman Islands. And ‘deep water’ is also, I think, symbolic of their deep feelings for each other that both caused them pain.
The story opens with the heroine at the Miami airport waiting to connect to her flight to the Grand Cayman. She is a London knitwear designer who has lost everything in a fire. Her boyfriend also abandoned her, and she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her pregnant sister has invited her to visit and recuperate until the insurance money comes through and she can rebuild her business.
Heroine recognizes the hero at the airport. She met him at her sister’s wedding six years before when she was 17. He was charming to her and she has always held that meeting in her heart. But hero looks cranky and heroine decides not to approach him.
Once on the island heroine is subjected to the matchmaking of her sister and hero’s sister. Seems hero is cranky because of a love affair gone wrong and sis wants to cheer him up.
The H/h have an angry tennis match, an angry dance, and an angry dinner together until the hero finally relents and tells heroine he’s tired of his sister’s matchmaking. They decide to “fake” a relationship to get everyone off their backs. Hero teaches her to dive and heroine falls in love with his cranky self.
They eventually end up kissing (several times) with the hero always brutally pushing her away. Heroine has no shame and continues to insist she is in love with him. They end up having sex and heroine thinks it will be okay – until OW shows up.
Hero leaves the island with the woman who ran off with his cousin. Heroine and hero’s sister are in despair that he’s so stupid. Meanwhile heroine’s sister’s pregnancy is in danger and there is some drama until the baby is safely delivered.
Finally, the hero returns. Seems he wasn’t in love with the OW – he was trying to clear his name after his cousin embezzled money from his clients. It’s all sorted out now and he’s ready to love the heroine back and rebuild both their businesses.
This ending might have worked if the hero had hinted at money problems, but he kept putting the heroine off because of his own commitment issues. The money stuff just seemed out of left field and not relevant to how a man would treat a woman he was supposed to love.
Still, the heroine is happy, so reader will just have to happy with that. I did like the analogy with hero showing the heroine a whole new world of deep water, but also needing to be rescued by her as well.
The story opens with the heroine at the Miami airport waiting to connect to her flight to the Grand Cayman. She is a London knitwear designer who has lost everything in a fire. Her boyfriend also abandoned her, and she is on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her pregnant sister has invited her to visit and recuperate until the insurance money comes through and she can rebuild her business.
Heroine recognizes the hero at the airport. She met him at her sister’s wedding six years before when she was 17. He was charming to her and she has always held that meeting in her heart. But hero looks cranky and heroine decides not to approach him.
Once on the island heroine is subjected to the matchmaking of her sister and hero’s sister. Seems hero is cranky because of a love affair gone wrong and sis wants to cheer him up.
The H/h have an angry tennis match, an angry dance, and an angry dinner together until the hero finally relents and tells heroine he’s tired of his sister’s matchmaking. They decide to “fake” a relationship to get everyone off their backs. Hero teaches her to dive and heroine falls in love with his cranky self.
They eventually end up kissing (several times) with the hero always brutally pushing her away. Heroine has no shame and continues to insist she is in love with him. They end up having sex and heroine thinks it will be okay – until OW shows up.
Hero leaves the island with the woman who ran off with his cousin. Heroine and hero’s sister are in despair that he’s so stupid. Meanwhile heroine’s sister’s pregnancy is in danger and there is some drama until the baby is safely delivered.
Finally, the hero returns. Seems he wasn’t in love with the OW – he was trying to clear his name after his cousin embezzled money from his clients. It’s all sorted out now and he’s ready to love the heroine back and rebuild both their businesses.
This ending might have worked if the hero had hinted at money problems, but he kept putting the heroine off because of his own commitment issues. The money stuff just seemed out of left field and not relevant to how a man would treat a woman he was supposed to love.
Still, the heroine is happy, so reader will just have to happy with that. I did like the analogy with hero showing the heroine a whole new world of deep water, but also needing to be rescued by her as well.
March 3, 2020
This is one of those books where the H basically destroys the heroine and when he finally admits his love, she is such a broken, hopeless mess that she accepts him without holding him to any standards. His grovel was insufficient and I strongly feel that she will end up committing suicide 10 years into the marriage because her entire emotional wellbeing is built around this awful man.
November 4, 2025
At 70% on this and contemplating a DNF.
At this point I am so very confused, as confused as the h.
I can't possibly conceive of what the H is up to here. As far as I can tell, he's not playing some revenge game on the h- the only time they met previously was at her sister's wedding, and not only did nothing bad happen then, the H didn't even remember the h from then at all.
But he keeps playing super hot and super cold- he ping-pongs between attracted to the h and charming, and cold and hostile to the h and cruel. Sometimes he mixes it up a little with acting casually, platonically friendly, usually directly following an intense makeout session, then a hostile lashing-out at the h for... participating?, followed by blaming her for not following his "rules" when he's the one who keeps breaking them, then back to casually friendly as if none of the previous things had ever happened.
Like, he's a jerk, but he's a WEIRD jerk that doesn't make sense.
I'm also confused by the h, at one point, deciding that the way to really pay him back for being such a weird bipolar alphahole is to... tell him about their first encounter when she was 17 at the wedding, and how she's been in love with him ever since, and she had a photo of him pinned up on her wall, and she fantasized about him for 5 years. Like what? How?
Naturally this ends up hurting her more than him, because he's more like ?!??!??!?? in the first normal human reaction he's had to ANYTHING up to this point.
Then he reverts to Charming but Platonic and asks her to continue their pretense (at some point for some weird reason he decided they should pretend to be dating but only be friends, and not ever talk about the past. Or the future. Or anything personal. But also he reserves the rights to flirt with her, but heaven help her if she RESPONDS and wants to flirt back, because she's breaking the Rules.), for the rest of the trip. And acts like he didn't just burst into her apartment looking to kill the man he thought she went home with, then nearly have sex with her, then insult her, etc.
Weird. May report back when book finished.
(SPOILERS BELOW)
EDIT: While the hero did finally explain his behavior, I'm not 100% sure it justified it. Turns out, it wasn't actually a broken heart, although his former fiancee DID run off with his best friend and marry him, which sucked. But what sucked even more is that his BFF was also his partner in his company, and he found out right before the trip that he had been embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds to try to keep the wife/former fiancee in fancy clothes and whatnot.
H was worried about his company going under and also that he might be going to jail, so he treated the h like crap because he didn't know if he had a "future" to offer her. But his great lust I mean lurve kept overcoming his restraint.
Yep, that totally explains the first day when he nearly knocked her out with his tennis serve. He was trying to keep her at arm's length. And that tooootally justifies the end where, after the heroine rescuing him from drowning while they were diving, they have the most glorious, rapturous, passionate, loving sex ever, then his ex-fiancee shows up crying and he just leaves with her, without a word.
Anyway. It was okay I guess.
At this point I am so very confused, as confused as the h.
I can't possibly conceive of what the H is up to here. As far as I can tell, he's not playing some revenge game on the h- the only time they met previously was at her sister's wedding, and not only did nothing bad happen then, the H didn't even remember the h from then at all.
But he keeps playing super hot and super cold- he ping-pongs between attracted to the h and charming, and cold and hostile to the h and cruel. Sometimes he mixes it up a little with acting casually, platonically friendly, usually directly following an intense makeout session, then a hostile lashing-out at the h for... participating?, followed by blaming her for not following his "rules" when he's the one who keeps breaking them, then back to casually friendly as if none of the previous things had ever happened.
Like, he's a jerk, but he's a WEIRD jerk that doesn't make sense.
I'm also confused by the h, at one point, deciding that the way to really pay him back for being such a weird bipolar alphahole is to... tell him about their first encounter when she was 17 at the wedding, and how she's been in love with him ever since, and she had a photo of him pinned up on her wall, and she fantasized about him for 5 years. Like what? How?
Naturally this ends up hurting her more than him, because he's more like ?!??!??!?? in the first normal human reaction he's had to ANYTHING up to this point.
Then he reverts to Charming but Platonic and asks her to continue their pretense (at some point for some weird reason he decided they should pretend to be dating but only be friends, and not ever talk about the past. Or the future. Or anything personal. But also he reserves the rights to flirt with her, but heaven help her if she RESPONDS and wants to flirt back, because she's breaking the Rules.), for the rest of the trip. And acts like he didn't just burst into her apartment looking to kill the man he thought she went home with, then nearly have sex with her, then insult her, etc.
Weird. May report back when book finished.
(SPOILERS BELOW)
EDIT: While the hero did finally explain his behavior, I'm not 100% sure it justified it. Turns out, it wasn't actually a broken heart, although his former fiancee DID run off with his best friend and marry him, which sucked. But what sucked even more is that his BFF was also his partner in his company, and he found out right before the trip that he had been embezzling hundreds of thousands of pounds to try to keep the wife/former fiancee in fancy clothes and whatnot.
H was worried about his company going under and also that he might be going to jail, so he treated the h like crap because he didn't know if he had a "future" to offer her. But his great lust I mean lurve kept overcoming his restraint.
Yep, that totally explains the first day when he nearly knocked her out with his tennis serve. He was trying to keep her at arm's length. And that tooootally justifies the end where, after the heroine rescuing him from drowning while they were diving, they have the most glorious, rapturous, passionate, loving sex ever, then his ex-fiancee shows up crying and he just leaves with her, without a word.
Anyway. It was okay I guess.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews