Jennifer E. Archer is experiencing something rare for a first-time author. Typically, a book comes out, becomes a massive hit, and then becomes a movie that stars one of our favorite celebs. But she's doing things her own way. Her debut novel, Into the Deep Blue, is actually based off a screenplay of the same name. Not only that, but the movie is already in the works and set to star Maxton Hall's Damian Hardung. And still, the book is being released first and will no doubt make us obsessed for what is to come!
Cosmopolitan has an exclusive first look at Jennifer E. Archer's Into the Deep Blue, which is set to be released on September 30, 2025 and follows two friends who both recently lost their mothers. After a big fight spreads them apart, they now set off on a pre-planned road trip together where they are left to face the truth about their friendship and their future. Here's some more info from our friends over at Marble Press:
Perfect for fans of Nicola Yoon’s The Sun is Also a Star and John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars, Into the Deep Blue is Fiona and Nick’s achingly moving, wry, and hopeful tale about falling apart and coming together, told from two unforgettable points of view.
Nick and Fiona were meant to be friends―best friends―and they wouldn’t change that for the world. At least, that’s what they tell themselves. Because they can’t be an us. Nick doesn’t believe in happy endings ever since they both lost their moms unexpectedly senior year. And Fiona often wonders if all they have in common is their numb hearts. Still, they’re content to share everything else with each other. Honestly. Everything but sparks. But when Fiona accidentally lets her guard down more than she intended to with Nick, it threatens to ruin their fragile balancing act. Luckily, Nick isn’t about to let a little misunderstanding get in the way of the weekend trip they’ve been planning for months. Fiona is just hoping for some closure on the first anniversary of her mom’s death―except grief isn’t that simple, and choosing to love again isn’t, either. Now the only thing standing between Fiona and Nick is the truth. They just need the courage to reach for it.
We're revealing the book's stunning cover that will leave you absolutely mesmerized! See it below!
Ready to see Nick and Fiona's story unfold? You can read an exclusive excerpt below! Just make sure to pre-order Into the Deep Blue before diving in!
An Excerpt From Into the Deep Blue
By Jennifer E. Archer
Fiona
My phone buzzes from my nightstand. In a sleepy haze, I flop my hand against the table until I find it. It’s six a.m.
Dad: Fi?
Me: Is the house on fire?
Because it’s freaking six!
Dad: No. Nick’s in the kitchen.
I read the words and reread them. They soak in, shattering any lingering veil of sleep.
Is he joking?
My phone buzzes in my hand.
Dad: He has a bag. Says it’s for your trip.
Should I send him up?
The trip? We haven’t spoken in weeks—since the night I went completely nuts in my living room. Why would he be here now?
Me: No! I’ll be right down
Every second I sit here thinking about this is more time for Dad to grill him, so I scramble out of bed and search my room for some kind of miracle that might make me look pulled together. And yeah, there’s nothing, so I throw on my robe, cinch it tight around my waist, and race downstairs, hoping this isn’t real.
It’s real.
Nick and Dad are sitting at the kitchen table like this is a regular thing. Nick shovels spoonfuls of my Lucky Charms into his mouth and Dad’s face is covered by the morning newspaper.
“Hey,” Nick says through a mouthful of cereal.
“Hey.”
“You said six, remember?” he says, holding up his phone like nothing ever happened.
“I did?”
Two months ago, before our friendship fell apart.
“Uh-huh.”
There’s an entire conversation that we should be having, but it’s impossible thanks to Dad just sitting here. Dad flicks the paper back and eyes me over his glasses.
“Right. Let me grab a shower.”
Nick pushes his chair back. “You’ll take forever. Shower later.”
“No, I can’t . . . I can’t drive like this.” Half asleep, basically. “I’ll be quick.”
He carries his bowl to the sink and washes it. “Where’s your stuff? I’ll pack up the car.” He glances back at me and reads the caught-in-the-headlights expression I’m wearing.
“You don’t have any stuff.”
I shake my head.
“You shower. I’ll pack.”
I look from him to Dad. “Yeah. Okay.” I back out of the kitchen and head upstairs, knowing Nick will follow. Instead of turning toward the bathroom, I go into my room and close the door behind him.
“Whoa! What the shit happened to your room?” He takes it in as he spins around. “I like it!” He shakes off his disorientation and moves to my closet, sliding open the panel. Then he pulls my backpack from the floor like he owns the place.
“What are you doing?”
He unzips it and drops it on my bed. “I’m packing,” he says like it’s obvious. He brushes past me and pulls open my top drawer. “After arriving on time, I might add, for a trip that’s been planned forever.” He finally notices the drawer is full of my underwear and jolts back. Then he fully commits and scoops out a handful.
“Nick. Stop. I’m not going anywhere with you.”
He holds his hands out in front of him, fist full of my underwear, like Chris Pratt trying to get a handle on his velociraptors. “Yes. Yes you are.”
“Are you out of your mind?” I whisper-yell. “And why are you doing this at six in the morning? You know I can’t have morning conversations.”
“Fi. We have to do this.”
“We don’t have to do anything.” It’s tough talking to him with a pair of my yellow duck print boy shorts in his hands. They were a gift from May. I knew they’d find a way to haunt me. “Can you put those down?”
He heads for the backpack and drops them inside. “You won’t do this without me.”
“Yes, I will.”
“Oh, really? When?”
“Soon. Like today.” I close my eyes because I don’t know what I’m talking about—morning conversations. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t need you to go with me to Monterey.”
He’s already back at my dresser, a little more nervous about which drawer to open next. “Nick!”
His shoulders sag, and he turns to face me. “I know you don’t need me. I want to go with you, okay? I messed up. Huge. Even though I feel like you should own maybe five percent of this—” He stops short when he catches the death stare I’m sending. “Or not. That’s fine.” He rakes his fingers through his beachy waves. “Look, I don’t know how things got so carried away.”
My mind is reeling. “What does that mean?” When I hear carried away, I imagine him and May plowing through the pages of the Kama Sutra in his bedroom.
“It doesn’t mean anything.” He shrugs, searching for a way out of this. “It means . . . I don’t know what it means. I got confused.”
“And now you’re not?”
“No. I’m still pretty confused. As a general rule.” He flashes me a smile, and in that heartbeat of a second, I know I’m going with him. “But I’m not confused about this,” he goes on. “This trip was meant to be, and it’s happening, and—” He straightens, drawing his lips tight. “Fuck it. I miss you. I miss hanging out with you. And what’s it all about, right? Nothing is more important to me than this—than going with you to Monterey, so please?” His eyes meet mine. “Please.”
The sight of him this way, flustered and determined, the need in his voice, I mean, as much as I want to murder him, I want more of this. More of Nick. I missed him too, but I’m not about to say it. Instead, I say, “What time is it?”
He wakes up his phone. “Six-thirty.”
“Give me ten minutes.” He goes to open another drawer, and I stop him. “Maybe not that one, ‘K? Just closet stuff.”
He squints at me, a mischievous smile spreading across his lips, and he steps back, raising both hands. “What’s in the drawer, Fi?”
“I mean it!”
His head lilts to the side. “Come on. You know I’m going in there.”
“Oh my god. Stop.”
At least he pretends to behave and crosses the room to my closet. When I’m at the door, he calls out, “I missed you too, Nick,” in a high-pitched voice.
“I missed you too, Nick.” I mimic back in the same funny voice he used.
“Still counts. I’m taking it,” he calls after me.
When I get back to my room, Nick’s not there. I peek out the window and see him and Dad talking as they load up the car. Dad puts a hand on Nick’s shoulder. It looks serious. Maybe he’s threatening him within an inch of his life. I throw on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt.
Nick calls from downstairs. “Fi! Let’s go.”
I grab the narwhal album from my nightstand. Then, I rush into Mom’s bathroom, open the drawer, and drop her face cream in my bag.
Downstairs, Dad hands me a sweater. “Drive safe. Text me when you get in.”
“Are you sure this is okay? I forgot to . . . I just . . . ”
He pulls me into a hug. “I put some cash in your backpack and my credit card for emergencies.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
He turns to Nick. “Be careful.”
“Yes, sir.”
And we’re off. The warm scent of freshly brewed coffee fills the car. Dad filled two travel mugs for us, and Nick is holding his. My hair is still wet and soaking through the back of my T-shirt.
Neither of us says a word.
The only thing distracting me is the immediate urge to take inventory. I’m cataloging everything I wanted to bring and am sure he forgot. Nick eyes me. He knows what I’m doing. “It’s all there, Fi.”
“My glasses.”
“In the bag, both pairs. Allergy meds, Advil, sunglasses, contacts, your I-won’t-touch-hotel-floor socks, and . . . ”
Ugh, he did go into my sock drawer.
He reaches into the back and pulls out a small stuffed moose.
“Minou?” I say, secretly thrilled he brought her, the one keepsake I couldn’t part with, but I downplay the whole thing. “You didn’t have to bring Minou.”
“Whaat?” He covers Minou’s ears in mock horror. “How can you say that? She’s devastated.”
He fiddles with her coat, and for the first time, this trip feels real to me. My mind races through the last half-hour.
“Hey, what did my dad say to you in the driveway?”
“You mean other than ‘Be careful, Nick,’” he says in my dad’s voice.
“Yeah.”
He hesitates and watches the cars whip by out the passenger window. “Nothing.”
The way he shifts away from me makes me think there was more to it.
“So, where are we at?” I emphasize the we, and he knows what I mean. I mean us.
He takes a drink of coffee, letting the question settle. “On Fourth Avenue headed for the highway.”
Classic Nick. And I missed that, too. Just like that, we seem okay. Or as okay as we can be.
Then I remember. My mouth falls open, and I gasp. “I canceled the reservation!”
Nick blinks at me in mock horror. “What? You canceled?” Then, his face transforms into a smile. “I know. I rebooked it.”
The freeway entrance sign blazes past us. “Which way am I going?”
“Did that, too,” he says, waving his phone. “All routed out. Head for the I-5 South, and we’ll be on that for a while.”
I take the ramp onto the highway.
“And when we stop, we can switch up,” he says.
“Switch up?”
From his wallet, he slides out a plastic card, his license. He smiles, beyond pleased with himself.
“What? You got it?”
“Yup.”
“When?”
“Last week. May took me.”
Her name lands like an anvil between us. I keep my eyes on the road and pretend I didn’t hear it. Be cool. I can be cool.
“I was going to fail, too. By my third mistake, it was game over, and the lady was about to write something on the paper, so I broke out the Mom story.”
My eyes widen. “Noooo, you didn’t?”
“Oh yeah, the whole damn thing. She was full-on crying when we pulled into the DMV.”
“Was it the real version?”
He pauses. “It was.”
“Wow. Heavy. Wait. Was she the first person you’ve told?”
“Yeah! It felt pretty good, too, kind of like therapy, but she couldn’t get out of the car fast enough, and how could she fail me after that? It was a total pity pass.”
“That’s insane but not a great endorsement of your driving skills.”
He shoots me a look. “I can drive.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Minou has complete faith in my driving abilities, don’t you, Minou?” He holds up Minou and forces her head to nod.
“What made you finally do it?”
“This trip. You. What kind of asshole would I be letting you drive the whole way?”
And then I remember exactly what I forgot to bring. I blink at Nick in a panic. “I forgot her camera.”
He meets my eyes with all the calmness in the world. “I didn’t.”
It’s a long drive to Monterey. Neither of us addresses the elephant in the car. We listen to music, we sing, and we stop for drinks at a place with a giant pink frosted donut on a pole reaching for the sky.
It’s ten when we finally pull in. I text Dad, letting him know we made it. The motel is a long two-story white stucco building, and across the street are blinking storefronts of the massage and tattoo parlor variety. It’s a little shady. A few homeless people are on the sidewalk.
We share the same weary expression. “You booked it for more than an hour, right?” I ask, and Nick breaks into a smile.
“I think an hour’s plenty. Do you want to go somewhere else?”
Yes. Yes, I do want to go somewhere else. “Like where?”
“I don’t know.”
I pick up my phone and type “Monterey hotels” into google then click it off. “It’s fine. We’re tired. Let’s just sleep.”
“Okay, so we’ll sleep.”
Nick parks. It’s the unsafest spot in the lot, not even remotely near the entrance. We take out our backpacks, and I follow him through the revolving doors into the lobby. An older woman at the front desk smiles sweetly, asks us where we’re from, and gives us two keys to a king room—a downright luxury compared to the double we squeeze into at his house.
It takes all of five minutes for our stuff to cover the furniture. The place is okay. It’s a little like a dentist’s office if you stuck a bed in the middle of the waiting room. There’s a beige loveseat, a flat-screen TV, and local magazines spread across a metal coffee table—not as cool as it looked online.
I slip on my I-won’t-touch-hotel-floor socks and pajamas, and wash my face in the glass bowl that really does look like the pictures. Nick’s already in bed when I come out of the bathroom. He took the side closest to the entrance—the serial killer side—and I didn’t even have to ask. The room is so dark I trip over both of our shoes, trying to make it to the bed.
Do we need to talk about what happened? Our fight is kind of a blur, but I can’t stop thinking about how hurt he looked that night when I said I didn’t ask him to come over.
His face is lit up from the glow of his phone. He keeps glancing at me as I do my crazy hotel routine of kicking away the gross duvet and shining my phone light around the edges, searching for signs of bedbugs. I finally settle under the sheets.
“Nick?”
He doesn’t look away from his screen. “Mmm?”
“Why did you come?”
He lowers his phone and is quiet for a minute. “Because . . . it’s important.”
“I thought after that night . . . ”
“I would what . . . never talk to you again?”
“Something like that.”
The light from his phone dims, but I can see a hint of his bright blue eyes through the darkness. “What is this? Midnight confessions?”
I glance at the clock. “More like eleven P.M. confessions.”
He sighs. “What can I say? There was a huge Fiona-shaped hole in my life without you.”
“Honestly?” This will get him.
He puts his phone on the nightstand and lays back. “It was what it was. Yeah, I was pissed, and I don’t understand why you didn’t text me, but I’m not a child, Fi. I’m not going to like, unfriend you or whatever.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Everything just snowballed insanely fast . . . ”
His eyes meet mine. “I’m sorry, too.”
ADAPTED FROM INTO THE DEEP BLUE BY JENNIFER E. ARCHER, TO BE PUBLISHED ON SEPTEMBER 30, 2025, BY MARBLE PRESS. COPYRIGHT © 2025 BY JENNIFER E. ARCHER.
Into the Deep Blue, by Jennifer E. Archer will be released on September 30, 2025. To preorder the book, click on the retailer of your choice:
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