Hooked

I picked up Hooked because I kept seeing it described as Peter Pan but told from Captain Hook's side, and I wanted to know how far Emily McIntire would actually go with that flip. The answer is pretty far. This is not a Disney story with a little extra kissing. It is a contemporary dark romance, published in 2021 by Bloom Books, that keeps the names and the old grudges from J. M. Barrie's play but drops them into modern London crime, bars, private clubs, and back room deals. James Hook is not wearing a feathered hat here. He runs drugs and secrets. Wendy Darling is not a nursery storyteller. She is twenty, sheltered, curious, and trying to figure out who she is after a childhood shaped by a strict father. Peter Pan is not a boy who flies. He is a rival boss and a trafficker, and that change sets the whole tone.

The premise is simple on the surface. Hook wants revenge. Peter ruined his life when they were kids, took something from him that never healed, and now Hook plans to hurt Peter by taking Wendy. Wendy is Peter's weakness, or at least the person Peter is obsessed with keeping close. So Hook watches her, learns her routine, and then pulls her into his world. What he does not plan is that Wendy pushes back, asks questions, and starts to see through him, and that slow shift turns a kidnapping plot into a messy romance where both people have to decide what they actually want.

James Hook and the weight he carries

James Hook, who most people in this version just call Hook, is thirty something, rich in the way that makes people nervous, and tired in a way he tries to hide with control. McIntire gives him a rough childhood that explains a lot without excusing everything he does. As a boy named James, he grew up around Peter, who in this retelling is not a magical friend but a cruel older kid turned criminal leader. Peter tormented him, marked him, and left him with trauma around being powerless. The hook hand is still here, but it reads less like a pirate prop and more like a scar he never got to choose.

As an adult, Hook runs a high end bar called Jolly Roger as a front, and behind it he moves product for a larger network. He is good at staying calm, good at reading a room, good at making people owe him favors. His crew includes familiar names reworked for this world. Smee is his right hand, loyal and chatty and often the only person who can tease Hook without getting shut down. The lost boys are not lost kids in tights. They are Peter's men, younger dealers and muscle who grew up loyal to Pan.

What makes Hook interesting to follow is that he is split. Part of him wants to be done with Peter completely, to build something clean and walk away. The other part keeps score. He tells himself the plan with Wendy is only business, only payback. Kidnap the girl Peter watches, use her to draw Peter out, break Peter's hold on Neverland, which here is not an island but a private club and trafficking hub. But from the early chapters you can see the scorekeeping is eating him. He drinks too much. He sleeps badly. He checks locks twice. He holds people at arm's length because closeness has always ended with someone using it against him.

His voice in the dual point of view chapters is guarded and dry. He notices small things about Wendy, the way she fidgets with her sleeves, and he hates that he notices. There are scenes where he could be cruel and chooses to be careful instead, like making sure she eats. Those choices do not make him a good man in this book. He still lies to her. He still uses her as bait. But they show the gap between the man he pretends to be for revenge and the man he might be if he stopped.

By the middle of the book, his revenge plan starts to crack. Peter does not react the way Hook expected. Wendy does not act like a pawn. And Hook has to admit that keeping her close stopped being about Peter a while ago. That admission scares him more than any gun or knife in the story.

Wendy Darling finding her own nerve

Wendy Darling is twenty and lives at home with her parents and her younger brothers, John and Michael. Her father is controlling and image obsessed, the kind of man who cares more about how the family looks than how they feel. Her mother is softer but mostly goes along to keep the peace. Wendy has spent years being the good daughter. She works, she helps with her brothers, she does not cause trouble. Inside, she is restless. She reads, she writes a little, she wonders what it would feel like to be wanted for who she really is instead of who she is supposed to be.

When Hook first notices her at a coffee shop and then later at his bar, she stands out because she does not fit his world. She orders something sweet. She looks around like everything is new. She talks to strangers with an openness that would get most people hurt in Hook's circles. Peter has already noticed her too. In this version, Peter has been watching the Darling family for a while, fixated on Wendy in a way that feels possessive rather than tender. Wendy knows Peter by name but does not fully grasp what he is until much later, which is part of what makes her vulnerable.

The kidnapping itself is not a snatch off the street with a bag over her head for chapters on end. Hook arranges for her to come work at the Jolly Roger, gets her close, and then keeps her there when she learns too much. It is coercion dressed up as choice at first, and Wendy knows it. She is angry. She tries to leave. She tries to call home. Hook blocks her, and that is where readers have to decide how they feel about the romance label, because the power gap is real and it stays real for a good part of the book.

What kept me reading Wendy's chapters is that she does not just wait to be saved. She pays attention. She learns the layout of the bar, the names of the staff, the times when Hook is distracted. She asks Smee blunt questions. She also starts to want things she was taught not to want, including anger and freedom from her father. Her attraction to Hook builds slowly through conversation, not just looks. She likes that he listens when she talks about books and family.

There is a strong scene about halfway where she confronts her father on the phone and then turns around and confronts Hook in the same night. It is one of the first times she holds her ground with both men. She is still naive about crime, but she is not passive. By the later chapters she makes active choices about staying, leaving, and what she will accept from Hook, and those choices drive the ending more than any shootout does.

Peter Pan as the villain of Neverland

Peter in Hooked is a hard character to sit with, which is the point. McIntire strips away the boy who would not grow up and leaves a man who refused to grow up in the worst way. He is charming when he wants to be, young looking, quick with a smile, and completely self centered. People follow him because he promises belonging and fun and money, especially boys with nowhere else to go. Then he uses that loyalty to keep them tied to him.

Neverland in this book is a club owned by Peter, with a hidden back operation. Up front it is music and drinks and private rooms. In the back it is drugs and exploitation, including trafficking young women. Wendy's friend Tina, who works there as a dancer under the name Tink, becomes the clearest window into how Peter operates. He gives Tina attention and gifts, tells her she is special, then isolates her and threatens her when she tries to pull away. It is grooming and control, written plainly, and McIntire does not soften it.

Peter's history with Hook is personal. As teenagers, Peter bullied and abused James in ways the book reveals in pieces. Peter also took someone Hook loved, and that loss is the fuel for Hook's revenge. When Peter learns Hook has Wendy, he does not panic like a lover. He gets angry like an owner. He sends men to watch the Darlings. He pressures Wendy's father, who owes Peter money, to hand her over.

The confrontations between Peter and Hook crackle because they know exactly how to hurt each other. Their fights are not sword duels on a ship. They are standoffs in alleys, threats over the phone, a brutal brawl in the club that leaves blood on the floor. McIntire keeps Peter dangerous to the end. He does not get a sad backstory that explains everything away. He takes what he wants, he punishes anyone who says no, and he believes Neverland gives him permission.

For readers who grew up loving Peter Pan, this version can feel jarring. That is intentional. The book asks what happens if eternal youth is not innocence but refusal to take responsibility, and what happens if the lost boys are not free but trapped.

Revenge, trafficking, and how the plot turns

The plot moves in three broad waves. First, Hook sets the trap. He hires Wendy at the bar, keeps her close, digs into her father's debts to Peter, and tries to force Peter to the table. Second, the plan slips. Wendy learns pieces of the truth about Neverland and about Hook's past, Peter tightens his grip on Tina and on the Darling family, and Hook's crew starts to question whether Wendy is worth the heat. Third, everything collides at Neverland, with rescues and betrayals that force Hook and Wendy to pick sides in public, not just in private.

The trafficking thread is central, not background decoration. Tina tells Wendy that girls get promised dancing jobs and then get pushed into private parties with no way out. Wendy sees a ledger she should not see, and realizes her father may have looked the other way while borrowing from Peter. Hook knows more than he admits at first, because he used to run product through some of the same channels before he tried to pull back.

Revenge is the engine, but McIntire shows how it poisons each step. Hook lies to Wendy to protect the plan, and each lie makes it harder for her to trust him later. He pushes Peter, and Peter retaliates against people Hook cares about, including an attack that puts Smee in the hospital. There is a stretch where Hook almost walks away, ready to send Wendy home and leave London. Then Peter does something cruel to Tina, and Hook gets pulled back in, not just for payback now but because leaving would mean letting Peter keep hurting people.

The romance grows inside that mess, which is why some readers love it and some bounce off it. Hook and Wendy talk late at night after close, share childhood stories, argue about books. He teaches her to shoot for self defense. She reads his face better than his crew does. The physical relationship starts with clear consent once she is no longer locked in. Still, the early coercion shadows the later tenderness, and the book does not fully resolve that shadow.

The climax at Neverland is bloody and fast. Hook and his men move to pull Tina and other girls out while Peter tries to use Wendy as bait to trap him. There are guns, a fire, a one on one fight that echoes the old Hook versus Pan duel but with fists and knives instead of swords. Wendy helps get the girls out, stands up to her father, and refuses Peter to his face. The ending gives Hook and Wendy a fragile happy close after time apart.

What works, what drags, and who should skip it

What works best is the voice. McIntire writes short, punchy chapters that switch between Hook and Wendy, and the pace rarely stalls. The banter at the Jolly Roger feels lived in. Smee stealing fries, the bartenders gossiping, Hook pretending not to care while fixing a wobbly table for Wendy. The retelling touches are clever without being cute. A crocodile tattoo, a clock ticking in a hallway before a fight, fairy dust as a drug name.

The romance works if you like enemies to lovers with a lot of friction and a protective, possessive hero who has to learn to back off. Hook grovels, in his way. He gives Wendy space, he tells the truth even when it makes him look bad. Wendy forgives but does not forget, and she sets terms. Readers who want equal footing from page one will not find it here.

Now the fair criticism, because this book needs it. The dark content is heavy, and consent is murky for a long stretch. Wendy is held against her will, and the book frames Hook's control as sexy well before he earns trust. Even though later scenes stress clear yeses, the early power gap never fully goes away. Hook is her boss, her captor, older and richer. Wendy has little real choice until late. If kidnapping as a meet cute is a hard no for you, skip this one without guilt.

Other issues are smaller but worth naming. Some side characters stay thin. John and Michael are mostly symbols of home rather than full people. Peter is scary but one note. The trafficking plot moves quickly at the end, with proof and rescue wrapping up faster than the slow build suggested. A few twists rely on people not asking obvious questions, like why the police stay so far in the background.

Content notes matter here. Beyond kidnapping and trafficking, expect explicit sex, violence, gun threats, drugging, past child abuse discussed on page, and emotional manipulation by a parent. The book includes a warning at the front for a reason. It is intended for adult readers who already know they enjoy dark romance. It is not for younger teens even though the source tale is for kids.

If you do read it, pay attention to Tina. Her arc is the moral center. She is funny and sharp and scared, and her friendship with Wendy gives the story heart when the men start posturing. Watch too for how McIntire handles Neverland itself. The club is loud and glittery up front and cold behind the curtain, and that split says more about Peter than any speech does.

I closed the book thinking Hooked knows exactly what it is. It is a spicy, violent, modern fairy tale rewrite that trades magic for crime and lets the villain tell his side. It does not fully clean up the ethics of its setup. For the right reader, someone who likes dark retellings and a heroine who finds her spine, it hits. For anyone else, the same pages will feel too much, and that reaction makes sense too.