Hooked: A Dark, Contemporary Romance (Never After Series)

Again, if you love Disney Fairytales, then this Peter Pan and Hook is for you!

I was very skeptical due to the trigger warnings. HOWEVER, I was so pleasantly surprised! I have never read anything like this before and the plot was amazing, and I LOVED how I could picture Hook as the actor from Once Upon a Time. Very good read!

I’m slowly making it a personal mission to try and get through some of my TBR and this one had been in my Kindle library for far too long. I enjoyed the dark and twisty fairytale thing more than I thought I would. The twist on Peter Pan with Wendy being Peter’s daughter was interesting but getting Hook as our MMC was my favorite part. I love getting a dark and brooding male lead so it fit perfectly for what I was looking for. Although I enjoyed the overall concept I still felt like something had been missing. I do like dark romances but I want to feel connected to characters and their love which I didn’t quite get until about halfway through. Overall, I was entertained enough to finish and might find myself diving into more twisty fairytales at some point!

Emily McIntire transforms Peter Pan into a dark romance filled with revenge, criminal rivalries, wicked references, and enough smut to make Neverland feel downright tropical. Hooked gave me everything I wanted from a villain romance. James Barrie is ruthless, seductive, and dangerously talented at talking Wendy through every intimate encounter. I spent a large portion of this book fanning myself and wondering why I waited so long to meet him. James has built his life around destroying Peter Michaels. Peter is the powerful businessman he blames for his parents’ deaths. His opportunity arrives when Peter’s sheltered daughter, Wendy, walks into the Jolly Roger. James decides to seduce Wendy, make her fall in love with him, and use her as the final weapon against her father. I said, “Uh-huh, suuuure, buddy,” the minute he convinced himself that feelings would never complicate his revenge plan. The direction of their romance is easy to predict, but that worked for me. I could watch James lose control of his carefully arranged scheme while enjoying every filthy decision he and Wendy made along the way. Their chemistry is intense, addictive, and extremely hot. James knows exactly what to say in the bedroom. His praise-filled instructions had me blushing. Wendy also refuses to remain a helpless heroine waiting for someone else to rescue her. Her father has controlled and neglected her for years. Her relationship with James awakens a sharper and bolder side of her personality. She fights back, challenges him, and discovers that she is much more capable than anyone expected. McIntire uses familiar names, settings, and lines from Peter Pan without allowing the original material to overpower her own imagination. The playful references add charm while the modern criminal underworld gives the retelling a distinct identity. Her writing is confident, entertaining, and dramatic. I would gladly pick up another book by her based on her writing style alone. I completed an immersion read using the paperback and audiobook narrated by Felicity Munroe and Rupert Hawthorne. The audiobook uses dual narration where each narrator performs every character during their assigned chapters. This format does not work well during intimate scenes. The exaggerated cross-gender voices and noises made me sigh during several moments that should have felt seductive. The narrators were not the problem. Duet narration would have worked a lot better for this book. Pick this up if you are looking for a dark romance with possessive villains, revenge plots, morally gray relationships, and generous amounts of spice. The plot may reveal its intentions early, but James and Wendy make the journey far too entertaining to resist.

I love a good fairytale retelling, but this book has the villian getting the happy ending. I thought this was a great revenge story with a lot of spice added in too. I really loved the writing style and can’t wait to finish the series!