Hooked by Emily McIntire

Dates Read: September 1, 2024 – September 2, 2024
Date Published: September 5, 2021
Source: Owned ebook

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Wendy is a 20-year-old girl who, above all else, loves her brother very much. She looks after him as best she can. Especially since their father, Peter, is never around, always working and away on business. When Wendy accepts her friend’s invite to a bar one night, her entire world is turned upside down when she meets James. A man who will stop at nothing to get her to agree to go on a date with him. But who is James really? And what, exactly, are his true intentions? As Wendy begins falling head over heels, James begins to wonder what it is he really wants out of their relationship and begins to forget why he even sought it out in the first place.

“Just remember that whenever things feel bleak, all situations are temporary. It’s not your circumstance that determines your worth, it’s how you rise from the ashes after everything burns.”

This book ROCKED me.

First of all, let me defend my honor here. I like to think I’m not as unhinged as I seem.

When I read a book, I can typically separate fiction from real life. What I mean specifically is that I can read something for what it is without letting the feelings I would have if the situation were reality seep into my enjoyment of the book.

Now that that’s out of the way…

I realllllly enjoyed this book.

First of all, the fact that this was a “retelling” of Peter Pan sent it straight to my TBR—and not just my TBR but my FAVORED TBR list. We all have them; let’s be honest here. While this was not really what I would consider a “retelling,” I so enjoyed the characters and their likeness to the original story.

I went into this assuming there would be some kind of love triangle between Wendy, Peter, and Hook. Or perhaps Peter would be the villain and Hook the hero. Neither of those things really happened. In fact, both the main characters… hell… ALL of the main characters were villains, and not one of them received any kind of redeeming story arc. To be honest, I kind of loved it.

I will say this, though, because I know one of the most unfavored tropes right now is miscommunication… There is a HUGE miscommunication in this story that sets it down a dark path. So if the miscommunication trope completely turns you off, you may want to steer clear of this one. I did sort of find myself getting frustrated over this aspect of the story, though I understood why it was happening in the grand scheme of things. Anywho…

Wendy was actually all of us. She wanted to believe that she wasn’t into this GOD of a man who was so sexually intuned to her but deep down, DEEP down, she knew she wanted every bit of that unhinged killing machine. I did enjoy her character a lot and how she kept her values in place while also throwing her morals completely out the window. What a ride that was.

Hook was written to be such a deep character and I absolutely loveddddd him. Was I a little sick of him using his past to play the victim in the present? Sure. But we were watching in real-time as he was growing as a person. As Wendy was helping him heal. What a beautiful thing that was in such a dark, DARK book. A man who will straight up KILL someone for insulting the people he loves? I’m all in. Don’t @ me.

This was just so different and so much fun, and I fully intend to read the rest of McIntire’s Never After stories. I’m in my dark romance era and I am LIVING for it.

“Darling, if I’m the dark, then you’re the stars.”

Full list of content warnings:

•Explicit Sexual Scenes
•Breath play/Choking
•Torture
•Gleeful Violence
•Killing on page
•Physical Assault
•Kidnapping
•Descriptions of pedophilia
•Descriptions of sexual abuse of a minor 
•Descriptions of physical abuse of a minor
•Stockholm Syndrome