Reviews with content warning for Cursing - Hooked

The first in the 'Never After' series, this book opens with a warning from the author that this is NOT a fairy tale reimagining. And she's absolutely spot on. While the character names might be familiar to fans of Peter Pan, this is definitely not a children's story. James Barrie is a man out for vengeance, and he figures the best way to get it is to ruin Wendy, the daughter of his nemesis Peter Michaels. But is it possible she might just ruin him instead?

So let's just get this out of the way up front. If you can't handle spice, this book is not for you. There is a LOT of it, and it's quite hot. I wouldn't say all of it is strictly necessary to move the plot forward, but it does give insights into the development of the relationship and the power plays of the characters. Even though it's not the best writing I've ever read (it does border a bit on the 'bad fanfic' end of the spectrum in a couple of places), for the most part it does its job very well and maintains believability while also pulling the reader into fantasy land...

While we're talking content/trigger warnings, there are allusions to assault of a minor, overt (but not excessively graphic) descriptions of violence and murder, kidnapping, drug abuse and so on. So not a book for the faint of heart of the innocent of mind!

Outside of the smut, the story is actually quite strong, if a little predictable. I enjoyed the mapping of the traditional Pan characters onto a modern criminal underworld setting and the twists and turns of the narrative. I did peg pretty early who you needed to be worried about, but even then there's a couple of nice little 'hooks' to surprise you. As a whole, the relationship does follow a very familiar pattern and so in that sense there's nothing that surprising, but the journey is still great to follow. If I had to be picky, I'd argue the 'misunderstanding' is a little thin and could do with a bit more depth of thought and feeling.

The author's depicting of James, aka Hook, provides everything you need to understand his motivation, why he is the way he is and the development of his character through the course of the story. His bad boy swagger and charm ooze off the page and I found him utterly captivating, especially in his moments of deepest darkness and complete vulnerability. While Wendy too has 'character', I found her far less developed. She's not completely two dimensional, but it does appear that most of the author's efforts went into shaping her male lead. I just couldn't get inside her head as much, despite half the chapters being written from her point of view. I just struggled to understand how someone previously so innocent and 'good' could look past what Hook does. It's not expressed that he suddenly changes his ways and stays on the right side of the law, so it puzzles me that his dark side and shady dealings don't seem to bother her at all.

As I read this on my Kindle, at the end of the boom I was invited to join the author's mailing list, upon which I could receive a free extended epilogue. Well that was a no-brainer! It is mostly an excuse for one more round of sexy-times, but it does give a nice little round off of the story. A little sappy, sure, but ultimately it is nice to see the villain get his happily ever after.

There are four more in this series to date, and I cannot wait to read them!

Content Warnings

melissaslibraryy's review against another edition

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dark emotional reflective sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

yugrah's review against another edition

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dark emotional fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

It’s so freakin good! Definitely spicy and kinky. Has a few fun plot twists throughout. And the epilogue gives you a few extra years of content.

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chelle22's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious sad tense medium-paced

4.0

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vidalovesspice's review against another edition

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dark emotional tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.5

Spice Lvl - 3 - Nothing remarkable or inventive
Female Character - Wendy Michaels
- 3/5 - fried tofu - has agency and is sassy. But that dreaded Stupid Stick got her good
Male Character/Love Interest - James "Hook" Barrie
- 1/5 - whiny ass man-child with dicks for brains
- Red Flag Rating - 5/5 - I love me a fictional toxic ass man. That's why I keep reading these spicy books. But when you hit 5 it's gonna be a no for me. The most unattractive thing ever is being an abusive piece of shit AND being stupid.
Stupid Scale
- So Stupid - I want my life back.
Trigger warning - child abuse, death of parents, domestic violence, murder, torture, death, terminal illness, trauma, organized crime
Kinks - erotic asphyxiation, breath play, choking, unprotected sex

Here we go with another hate read. I swear I don't do these intentionally, it's just that when I see the same books get recommended by a lot of people I'm going to go in with an open mind and excitement to read them so I can experience the same excitement. Hooked was honestly such a huge disappointment to me because I LOVED the premise. Focus on the villain and romanticize him. I'm here for a good villain era. I, too, love toxic fictional men. But this did nothing for me except hate Hook. Shame, because I thought the book was pretty well written for the most part. It had a good mix of spice and plot. But when one of your main characters is so unlikeable, I start picking shit apart in my hate read annotations.

The Good

The premise was good. A fractured tale of Peter Pan in a contemporary non magical setting with Hook as the anti-hero and Wendy as his foil. Great premise. Was so sold on it.

The Meh

Wendy - I didn't really mind Wendy. I actually liked her for the most part. She has a personality and when she gets upset and finally stands up for herself it's refreshing to see. However, Wendy does have some serious case of daddy issues and throws herself punani first to the first guy who gives her any attention. I wish she had held off on her own more with Hook but she submits to him way too easily
and forgives him so quickly after he kidnaps her and assaults her ON HER BIRTHDAY, vaguely accuses her without telling her what she did/didn't do, slut shames her, and then uses her as a pawn to get what he wants.
. Wendy also seems to find Stockholm syndrome and kidnapping hilarious and ironic. Yeah...real sexy...

The Bad

Hook - Hook is a fucking moron. How he is a higherup head honcho figure in his gang is a mystery. Here's a list of all the things that make this one of the WORST MMC's I've read in awhile, starting with the biggest one:
- He's a really inefficient leader and overall shitty boss.
  - Hook takes no time to know who works for him, from his personal assistants/lackeys, to the drug pushers he employs. There is 0 background check going on. He legit just has his lackeys come to him if he needs them for his temper tantrums, or he ignores them. As the leader of a huge crime organization, wouldn't you WANT to know who's working for you? Shouldn't you be keeping tabs on your employees and making sure they're happy so that they don't BETRAY YOU? For example, he takes
    0 time to learn about Smee, his whereabouts, what he's doing, etc. He just plucks the guy off the streets and makes him his first mate. Then he proceeds to either boss him around or ignore him for the rest of the book.
    The assholery is crazy. Which leads me to my next point:
  - He's an asshole to everyone including his crew and people he allegedly trusts. There are a lot of instances where he'll talk about how his crew is loyal to him, but it's so obvious this isn't the case. There's a scene where
    he goes to get protection money from some bakery because they didn't pay. And when they tell him they already paid he goes "you're lying! GIMME MAH MONEY OR IMA FUCK YOU UP!" and then the shop owner is like "MY BROTHER IN CHRIST, I PAID YOUR WOMAN LACKEY ALREADY!" Hook hears this and has no follow up questions, doesn't go to figure out who this woman is, doesn't tell his crew to look into it, and then proceeds to threaten the shop owner anyway. Fucking stellar leadership.
    There's also ANOTHER scene where he
    threatens whatshisface about not letting Wendy into the club because she's underage and has a fake ID. Hook proceeds to threaten the shit out of his employee FOR FUCKING DOING HIS JOB!
    MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!
  - He's mysogynstic, treats his female employees like shit by using them as his personal eggplant sleeve and then slut shaming them after.
    You see this with Moira especially. He uses her for his personal blow jobs then treats her like shit after, calling her a whore, telling her to brag about him fucking her so she can maintain her reputations, etc. When he finds out she betrayed him, he doesn't consider why she does it but just goes off on how much of a whore she is.
    Maybe don't sexually coerce your employees and slut shame them for a start and they'll be loyal to you. His attitude also extends out to Wendy.
    He's nice to her at first to get his dick wet, but as soon as his dicks for brain thinks Wendy has betrayed him, he kidnaps her, assaults her, and slut shames her. It's sick. He doesn't even offer Wendy an explanation for his stupid behavior. He just lets her fester and throws accusations her way without allowing her to defend herself or doing his own damn research.
    MAKE IT MAKE SENSE!
- Hook is a manchild, as mentioned previously. He throws a tantrum at the slightest inconvenience. Then he wonders why later on
  "oH Y eVeRyONe bUh-tRaY mEeee?!". Duh, dicks for brains, it's because nobody fucking likes you. Except Wendy.
  I understand this is a dark romance and Hook is meant to be a villain, but holy shit at least make your MMC likeable and smart. Not some petulant dumbass who has to wave his eggplant around to show off how much influence he has over the town, despite everyone else hating his guts. Hook is supposed to be charming and have the loyalty of his crew and have power in the town, but you really don't see any of that at all in the story.
- Constantly jumping to the WRONG conclusion and does no research or fact checking. Hook thinks with his dick and doesn't consider any consequences for his actions or any moves that could him the upperhand as top dog. There is very little investigating on his part the entire time. Here is a list of all the time he could have sorted shit out if he had just researched and investigated vs jumping into conclusions:
  - He doesn't look into who is stealing his drugs. He goes to 'interrogate' his unknown employees but beats the shit out of them and kills them without getting any real information.
  - Hook doesn't investigate who killed Ru even after 3 days of him finding him nailed to a tree. Instead he jumps into conclusions that Wendy had a hand in Ru's death. He also takes his disloyal crewmember's word that Ru went by himself to the alleged meeting point only to be killed.
    My guy. ABRE LOS OJOS!
  - Hook assaults Wendy, locks her up, slut shames her, etc. without any shred of proof she did anything to betray him, all because he immediately thought Wendy was behind Ru's murder. That same day Ru was killed was the same day Wendy wanted to drop off her brother to the boarding school. Hook OFFERED to take them. Wendy didn't pressure him to. But Hook still jumps to the conclusion that Wendy was behind Ru's murder. There's no follow up or even looking into information for proof she betrayed him or not. Nope, he just kidnaps her, abuses her, and then goes "whoops, my bad" when his brain cells finally start working. It's one thing to have ONE person betray you. It's another to have like 5 people, 3 of them higher ups, betray your ass. That sounds like a you problem at that point. Hook gets 5 red flags because he's a fucking idiot, and I can't suffer stupid whiny ass men.
The way the female characters are portrayed - The other female characters for the most part are portrayed really negatively, in my opinion. They're shown as caddy, disloyal, and only motivated to do things for a man. This is prominently shown with Maria, Moira, and Tina. Their whole purpose to exist is to bolster the men around them. There is no sisterhood or female support in this book. Even Wendy doesn't have any strong ties to the women in the book. It's disappointing to have a female author write shitty female characters like this as it just perpetuates women in a negative light.
The plots twists were also just so obvious. SO OBVIOUS unless you're dick for brains Hook.
Smee, Moira, and whatshisface were so obvious to be traitors. The whole everyone is related to Hook and Wendy reveal was also really just unnecessary and weird. It border on incest since Wendy and Hook are connected through her brother. It just got unnecessarily weird.
The main villain is wasted. After Smee's reveal as Croc, he just gets offed a page later. WTF what a dumbass waste of a reveal. Smee would have been a better character/villain to focus on. He seemed to know how to handle his shit but got offed the dumbest way to get the plot going. Don't build up a big bad and then kill him off in the same chapter. It's shit writing.

Normally, I enjoy suspending my brain cells to read spicy books. But it stops being enjoyable when the MMC is a fucking piece of shit with 0 redeeming qualities. I don't recommend, and I usually recommend a lot of smuts. But I draw a line at stupid and abuse. This book definitely wasn't for me. I couldn't even enjoy how bad it was.

Content Warnings

katattack345's review against another edition

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adventurous dark mysterious medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? N/A
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Content Warnings

allthechaptersandverses's review against another edition

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adventurous dark tense fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? No
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

I so badly wanted to like this book. I had great expectations. Sadly I thought that Hook was very creepy and never had the character arc he needed. I never felt like I got a good reason to root for him. Wendy made so many bad decisions that seemed so stupid that it made it hard for me to like her. The writing style wasn’t my favorite. While the idea was so creative I felt it failed to follow through.

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chai_latte_auroras's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? It's complicated
Loveable characters? It's complicated
Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.5

This book is very spicy and explores things not usually seen in regular romance. It is a villain story so the content is a bit dark.

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