Sisterhood of Reading

Hooked (Never After #1)- Emily McIntire

Rating- 🤩🤩🤩🤩
Format- Audiobook
Spice- 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Genre- Romance, Retellings

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The Never After Series is fairy tales where the villain gets the happy ending. This is the retelling of Peter Pan, that focuses on Hook and Wendy.

James “Hook” Barrie has suffered long enough. As a kid his parents were killed. He was sent to live with his uncle who mistreated him, that is until James was old enough to fight back and kill him. When James does, he is all alone and finds himself working with Rue. They have made a name for themselves, working in the illicit drug business. James is respected and people know his name but that means nothing to him while the man who killed his parents is still alive. Hook vows revenge against Peter Michaels.

Peter Michaels is a wealthy business man. He owns a legitimate airline business and more than a few illicit businesses. He prefers to be out “doing business” than raising his two children, Wendy and John. Wendy has been sheltered all her life, raised to be a perfect daughter and never cause trouble. That is until one night out with her friends at a bar, she meets James. James knows immediately who she is, the daughter of the man he vowed to kill.

James and Wendy begin a love affair. He started it as a way to get close to Peter and destroy him, but he finds himself becoming more involved than he had planned. Wendy finds out that James isn’t the man that she thought he was, that he has a darker side to him where everyone fears Hook. He has to decide if he is willing to lose the person he loves in order to destroy the man who took everything from him.

This audiobook was really entertaining. I enjoyed listening to it. I felt like Hook was a very toxic and sadistic character. Wendy was so naive when she started messing with him. He was so abusive to her when he thought she had crossed him and somehow in the end she forgives him and they end up together. That’s the appeal of this book I suppose, the villain definitely ended up with the happily ever after. I’m interested to see what the other books in this series are like. I think I enjoyed the audiobook but probably would not have liked this if I had read it.