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

From BookTok sensation Emily McIntire comes a dark and delicious fractured fairy tale reimagining of Peter Pan.

He wants revenge, but he wants her more…

James has always had one agenda: destroy his enemy, Peter Michaels. When Peter’s twenty-year-old daughter Wendy shows up in James’s bar, he sees his way in. Seduce the girl and use her for his revenge. It’s the perfect plan, until things in James’s organization begin to crumble. Suddenly, he has to find the traitor in his midst, and his plan for revenge gets murkier as James starts to see Wendy as more than just a pawn in his game.

Wendy has been cloistered away most of her life by her wealthy cold father, but a spontaneous night out with friends turns into an intense and addictive love affair with the dark and brooding James. As much as she knows James is dangerous, Wendy can’t seem to shake her desire for him. But as their relationship grows more heated and she learns more about the world he moves in, she finds herself unsure if she’s falling for the man known as James or the monster known as Hook.

Emily McIntire is a #1 New York Times and #1 Sunday Times bestselling author of romance where the stakes are impossible and the happily ever after is always worth the fight. Her books span sub-genres and have been translated into over a dozen languages, hitting bestseller lists around the world.

A stage IV breast cancer thriver, Emily can be found in Tennessee with her family and her cats who think they run the house.

Hooked by Emily McIntire is a dark, modern, villain centric retelling loosely inspired by Peter Pan, but set in a gritty contemporary world of crime, obsession, and revenge rather than in a fantasy Neverland. The story follows James “Hook” Barrie, a ruthless crime boss who rules his empire with cold precision, and Wendy Darling, the seemingly sweet, sheltered daughter of the man James hates most. Their worlds collide when James decides to use Wendy as a weapon in a long planned revenge scheme, only to find himself drawn to her in ways he never expected. What begins as manipulation gradually twists into a dangerous, consuming obsession on both sides, blurring the line between captor and lover, villain and victim.

James is introduced as a man shaped by trauma and betrayal. His past with the powerful businessman and politician referred to as “Peter” is the source of his relentless rage. Years ago, Peter hurt him in ways that left lasting physical and emotional scars, turning James into the feared figure he is now: elegant, controlled, and merciless, with a reputation that keeps others in line. He runs a nightclub and a criminal operation beneath its glossy surface, surrounded by loyal men who know better than to cross him. Despite his power, James’s life is hollow—he lives for vengeance, not happiness. His anger is a constant presence, kept carefully caged until the opportunity arises to strike at Peter through the person Peter cares about most: his daughter.

Wendy, meanwhile, appears at first to be the kind of girl who doesn’t belong in James’s world at all. She is smart, polite, and earnest, raised in privilege and kept largely in the dark about the darker parts of her father’s life. She has a complicated relationship with Peter: she wants his approval, but she also senses that something about him is off, controlling, and cold. Wendy is not weak, but she is naïve about how dangerous people like her father—and like James—can truly be. When readers meet her, she is on the brink of adulthood, ready to step into her own independence but still carrying the habit of looking at her father as a moral compass. That faith in him will be shattered as the story unfolds.

James and Wendy meet when she ends up in his club, and he recognizes immediately who she is. Seeing her in person gives his revenge plan a new, sharper focus. Rather than striking Peter from a distance, he decides to get close to Wendy, to seduce her, to hurt her father by corrupting what Peter values. At the start, his intentions are cruel and calculated: she is a pawn, a way to bring Peter to his knees. James turns on his charm, presenting himself as dangerously charismatic—a man who can offer Wendy a taste of freedom and rebellion she’s never had. Wendy, unused to being seen in this way, is drawn to him despite her better judgment. There is something about his presence, his intensity, that calls to the parts of her that are tired of being good and controlled.

Their relationship quickly becomes the emotional core of the book. James is older, dominant, and used to having power; Wendy is younger, but not a pushover. As they spend more time together, the attraction between them grows into something raw and consuming. The chemistry is intentionally dark and messy: it is built on lies, half truths, and hidden motives. James keeps his history with Peter a secret, all the while gathering information and setting traps in the background. He wants Wendy in his bed and Peter destroyed, and he believes he can have both. Yet the more he sees of Wendy—the way she tries to care for others, the way she challenges him instead of simply submitting—the harder it becomes for him to see her as just a tool.

Wendy, for her part, starts to sense that James is hiding things, but she also sees glimpses of vulnerability and pain beneath his carefully controlled exterior. She notices his nightmares, his scars, his flashes of tenderness that he is quick to cover with anger or cruelty. Those moments complicate her feelings; she cannot dismiss him as just a monster, even when he acts like one. As she falls deeper into the relationship, she is pulled between the safety of the life she’s always known and the wild, dangerous pull of James’s world. Her time with him changes her: she becomes more aware of her own desires, more willing to question her father, and less inclined to be the obedient, perfect daughter.

The novel slowly reveals the truth about what Peter did to James and why his hatred runs so deep. Peter is not the respectable figure he pretends to be; he’s manipulative, ruthless, and willing to sacrifice others to protect his image and power. The “hero” role he plays in public is a mask, and his true face is far closer to villainy than Wendy ever imagined. This inversion of roles—villain as protagonist, father as true monster—is at the heart of the story. James may be brutal, but his darkness is rooted in the abuse he suffered and the betrayal that shaped him. Peter’s darkness is calculated and self serving, hidden behind a polished smile.

As secrets come out, Wendy is forced to confront the fact that James’s war with her father is not random cruelty, and that she herself has been a pawn from the beginning. This betrayal cuts deep. She must decide whether James’s past and his pain excuse what he’s done, or whether some lines simply can’t be crossed. The emotional push and pull between them intensifies: she loves him, but she hates the way he used her; he needs her, but he fears that needing her will make him weak, vulnerable, and easier to destroy. Their bond becomes a battleground between revenge and redemption.

Around them, James’s criminal empire and Peter’s public power collide. There are threats, violence, and alliances tested to the breaking point. Wendy becomes a target not just in the emotional sense, but physically, as the feud escalates. James must choose between the revenge he has chased for years and the woman who has become his one point of light in a dark life. The cost of his choices is high for everyone involved. Verbal confrontations, dangerous encounters, and brutal acts of retaliation drive the story toward its climax, where the truth can no longer be hidden and the consequences can no longer be delayed.

In the end, Hooked is less about a neat moral lesson and more about the messy, intoxicating nature of love that grows in poisoned soil. It embraces its darkness: the morally gray characters, the unhealthy dynamics, the blurred lines between love and obsession, protection and control. Wendy does not stay the naive girl she was at the beginning; knowledge hardens her and forces her to claim her own power, even when she’s afraid. James, while still a villain in many ways, is pushed to confront what his rage has turned him into and what he is willing to sacrifice to keep Wendy safe. Their story is intense and twisted, a romance built in shadows rather than sunshine, echoing the Peter Pan myth only in the broad strokes while delivering a gritty tale about trauma, vengeance, and the way two broken people can find something like salvation in each other, even if it doesn’t look anything like happily ever after in a traditional fairytale.