Feeling dorkily serious about the Deeper experience

Great moments from last night’s reading
Book: Deeper by Megan Hart
Page: I’m currently halfway through
Spoiler level: Oh so low

Every night this week I've been reading a few chapters of Deeper before bed. And then I turn out the light and just lay there in the dark with this strange, lovely, bittersweet feeling about life and love and the passage of time.

It’s been so long since a book hit me like that. Not to get all dorky, but what the hell, that’s what a good book is supposed to do, right?

Don’t be fooled
Don’t be fooled by the contemplative state I seem to have been thrown into: Deeper actually happens to be quite the sexy and riveting page turner.

Plot, in a nutshell:
Deeper takes place in two time periods: then (about 20 years ago) and now (present). Then Bess spent the summer at Bethany Beach and fell for townie bad boy Nick. Now Bess is older, with two sons and a crumbling marriage to a philandering lawyer. She goes to spend time alone at the family beach house.

And Nick inexplicably appears. Nick hasn’t aged for 20 years, and he doesn’t eat or sleep or have a heartbeat, but he can still have sex (and no, he’s not a vampire!) Even Bess doesn’t seem clear on what happened to him after she left Bethany Beach all those years ago, though it seems clear he died. Neither of them want to delve into all that, or how/why he’s reappeared—they are so into being together that they don’t want to question it, though Bess sometimes wonders if she’s going crazy. In the then storyline, we get the teen romance, presumably leading up to what happened to Nick.

This whole mystery
What exactly is Nick? What will happen when Bess’ two boys join her at the beach home? Her oldest is nearly Nick’s age. Will they buy that he’s a boarder? What will happen when/if the other townspeople see Nick? Will they remember him from 20 years ago? Can Bess and Nick even have a real-life relationship? And what happened back then?

Sometimes when you have books that alternate time periods, one time period is more fun and interesting to read about than the other, but in Deeper, both time periods are hugely compelling.

And of course, the hotness
Nobody does a sex scene like Hart. There’s something about the details she chooses—everyday, mundane clothing or choreography details that create this hyper realism, this fresh, frank sensuality.

How in the world will this thing end?
Obviously I haven’t hit the endgame yet. Really, a million different things are possible: some heartbreaking, some juicy, some exciting. And of course, this is an Erotic Novel, not a romance, so you aren’t guaranteed a HEA. That said, I have complete trust in Megan Hart: she’ll give me a HEA or something better.

This has been one of my best reading experiences of the year. It will have to go really wrong for it not to end in my top five. I may or may not report in about it. I might be verklempt!