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Book Review: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Nir Eyal’s book Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products provides an overview of a model for producing habit-forming products. Products that people use habitually occupy a default space in their mind. These products become part of the activities in which people engage when their mind is on autopilot. For those who are familiar with Daniel Kahneman’s Thinking, Fast and Slow , you know that this is the mental state in which we spend most of our waking hours. We don’t actively think about walking, breathing, driving, typing, or other routine activities. When we are on autopilot, we are more susceptible to habit.

Book Specifications

Title: Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Author: Nir Eyal, with Ryan Hoover

Formats: Hardcover, Kindle, Audiobook

Publisher: Portfolio

Published: November 4, 2014

ISBN-10: 0241184835

ISBN-13: 978-0241184837

Benefits of Creating Habit-Forming Products

In his book, Nir Eyal points out that advertising is expensive, and the cost of multichannel ad campaigns is out of reach for all but the largest firms. By utilizing the Hooked model, companies can circumvent the costs of advertising through social sharing, enabling them to spend any advertising budget on the acquisition of new customers at launch, as opposed to reminding users to engage with their product.

Plus, a key metric for most companies is customer lifetime value , which frequent customer interactions and habitual engagement are drivers. However, not every product or service could benefit from the Hooked model. For example, customers rarely engage with their life-insurance provider throughout their relationship with a firm, In contrast, they may use a credit card many times a day. To evaluate a product’s potential for being habit forming, consider two factors: frequency and utility. No matter how much utility a product provides, if customers use it infrequently, using it never becomes a habit. However, even if a product offers only minimal benefits, if customers use it frequently, using it can become a habit.

Of course, every profit-seeking company wants to increase its products’ prices. The Hooked model provides a path forward to increasing prices. Once using a product has become ingrained in the user’s behavior, it becomes easier to increase its price, because the user might perceive shifting to a new product as an arduous task.

It is important to note that Eyal’s Hooked model is about getting people to create a habit relating to a desired activity. While a company could use this superpower , as he describes it, for ill, Eyal promotes the idea that Dark patterns are, essentially, unethical applications of the concepts of the Hooked model.

Concepts of the Hooked Model

Eyal describes the More Is More principle. More frequent usage drives more viral growth. Viral Cycle Time explains the compounding growth of users. More frequent usage and sharing of a product enables the product’s adoption to grow exponentially.

Unfortunately, there is a basic dissonance in the way customers and companies value innovation. Citing John Gorville of Harvard University, Eyal recognizes that many innovations fail because existing users irrationally overvalue the old, while companies irrationally overvalue the new. Because of this phenomenon, products that require behavioral change on the part of users are doomed to fail—unless their perceived benefits are nine times greater than incumbent solutions.

A big reason for users’ resistance to change is that users tend to store value in their tools. Leading companies recognize this. Gmail stores users’ email messages, making it easy for them to access their old email messages. Amazon Prime provides basic video and music libraries. In traditional marketing terms, this increases a customers’ switching costs. It’s the hell people go through when trying to switch from iOS to Android—or when changing their cable-television provider. People could switch, but all of their channels would have different numbers.

Eyal presents an example of the anchoring effect that the Hooked model has on user experiences. Citing a research study that pitted Bing against Google search, researchers found that these search engines anonymized search results were of equal quality. However, because frequent Google users were habituated to the Google user interface, even small differences on Bing led users to perceive it as slower or less effective than Google. This is because understanding the Bing user interface required them exert minimal cognitive effort. Necessitating even the smallest cognitive effort can have a negative effect on the user’s perception of a user experience.

In presenting the Hooked model throughout the book, Eyal provides clear explanations, then offers activities for the reader to perform, helping them to internalize and apply its concepts. Eyal’s Hooked model comprises four parts: Trigger, Action, Variable Reward, and Investment.

Like the bell triggering the salivation of Pavlov’s dog, triggers engage our brains in performing a behavior. Eyal describes two types of triggers: external and internal.

External triggers are easy to identify. They come in the form of text messages, email messages with a call to action, or messages from an app in your smartphone’s notification center. Internal triggers are harder to identify because they reside in the user’s mind. Using internal triggers requires a much deeper understanding of users’ motivations and fears. Strikingly, many internal triggers are associated with negative emotional states such as fear, boredom, envy, and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out).

Eyal recognizes the need to understand users and identifies several UX methods for developing user empathy, including user interviews, empathy maps, and the five-whys method.

According to Eyal’s book, an action is a behavior that a person performs in anticipation of a reward. It is essential that we understand key factors that influence how users perform behaviors, including the ease of performing an action and the psychological satisfaction the user derives from performing that action. As Eyal rightly points out, “Doing must be easier than thinking.”

Eyal draws on B.J. Fogg’s work regarding persuading users to perform a desired behavior, as follows:

• The user must have motivation (M).
• The user must have the ability to complete the action (A).
• A trigger (T) must be present to activate the behavior.

In short, Fogg’s formula is B = MAT.

Eyal applies this formula in his appraisal several technology solutions, including the Log in with Facebook protocol. According to his assessment, a motivation exists: the user wants to log in to a Web site. The ability exists: if the user has a Facebook account. There is a trigger, the application presents the user with a log-in screen. In combination, these factors can lead to a user behavior that enables Web-site owners to essentially outsource their identity and access-management functions, while reducing the friction that users would otherwise experience when logging in to their Web site.

This phenomenon has led to companies’ leveraging users’ Google, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts in logging into Web sites, easing access for users, while promoting the use of the relevant social-media apps. Of course, this approach requires organizations to trust Facebook to serve as a trustworthy steward of their users’ log-in credentials and user data.

Eyal’s comprehensive chapter on action describes various cognitive heuristics that influence human behaviors, including scarcity, framing, and anchoring biases. The chapter is instructive and advises readers that, when they must choose between cultivating motivation or designing for ability, it is smarter to focus on ability first. Using marketing to incite motivation is expensive and has a limited return on investment (ROI). Plus, users do not usually read instructions. Focusing on motivation would result in the abandonment key performance indicators (KPIs) at work.

Variable Rewards

A variable reward creates a craving through the unpredictability of rewards. For example, Eyal describes a refrigerator’s light coming on. You expect the light to activate when you open its door, so notice only if the light fails to come on. In contrast, if the future is less predictable, your attention is focused, and you anticipate possible outcomes. Dopamine surges when you anticipate a reward. For example, Pinterest meets a need, but showing related content is an unexpected reward. More precisely, the anticipation of a reward entices people more than the actual reward.

People are hardwired to experience delight as a result of variable rewards. As a video-game player anticipates receiving an item in a supply drop in Fortnite or a prehistoric hunter risks his life to hunt larger prey, human beings embrace the potential for prizes.

Some have hypothesized that our embrace of uncertainty is part of what makes humor. If I asked you, “Why do we tell actors to break a leg?” you could respond with the actual answer: “Superstition, because wishing someone good luck might attract the attention of evil spirits.” Or you could respond, “Because every play has a cast.” One reply is rational and follows a logical course, while the other takes an unexpected turn, so is more delightful. It also shows how explaining a joke ruins it.

Investment , the final step in the Hooked model, consummates the user’s relationship with the user experience. During this phase of an interaction, the user puts something into it: time, personal information, reputation, or, in some cases, money. The promise of their investment is that it would improve subsequent interactions, so it primes them for their next activity.

You can easily find examples of investment—for example, in the onboarding processes for Pinterest, Facebook, and LinkedIn. In the case of LinkedIn, the application presents users with a graph that illustrates the strength of their profile, encouraging them to divulge more information about themselves. The demand for investment is even more egregious in video games, in which the user can pay for credits that give them a virtual benefit such as weapons, superpowers, or farm equipment. In my mind, this is an extension of the sunk-cost fallacy: people continue to expend their resources even after previously wasting resources to avoid the cognitive dissonance of realizing their earlier poor decisions.

Investment can go even further in cases where users share their behaviors, inviting their friends to participate in their experience and fulfilling the More Is More principle the book articulated early on.

Hooked is an engaging read. Eyal does a good job of describing and encapsulating the principles that the book describes and advising readers on how to apply them to the design of habit-forming products. When I originally encountered this book, I was concerned that it might be full of dark patterns, but it was not. Nevertheless, I appreciated that Eyal acknowledges the potential for its principles’ misuse. However, as with Nudge , I especially value the book’s optimism. We can build habit-forming products that help people.

We don’t need to trick people into giving us their personal information so we can spam their contacts. We don’t need to make it hard to cancel subscriptions to our products. We don’t need to encourage endless scrolling with algorithms that produce negative feedback loops and sometimes deprive users of sleep.

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Join the discussion, d. ben woods.

Owner and Principal Consultant at Covalent Studio LLC

Akron, Ohio, USA

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Hooked by Nir Eyal Book Summary & Review

Product success is often based on repeat usage from customers. but it can be expensive to keep people coming back to your brand over time. hooked is about helping customers build habits around using your products, so they reengage with your solution automatically..

This book is for entrepreneurs, product managers, marketers, and anyone else interested in creating habit-forming products.  It’s a comprehensive approach for creating unprompted engagement, so users return to a product or service over and over again.

1. Create Unprompted User Engagement With Habits

Habits are one of the ways we learn to codify complex behaviors.  They form when our brains take shortcuts and stop actively deliberating over what to do in a given situation.  As a result, many of our daily activities are based on routines that have helped us find resolution in the past.

Habit-forming products leverage this insight to change user behavior and create unprompted engagement.  The aim is to influence customers to use our product or service, over and over, without relying on ads, promotions, or other external triggers to prompt them.  Such products tend to have a higher customer lifetime value, greater pricing flexibility, and supercharged growth relative to competitors.

Companies can begin to assess the habit-forming potential of their products by analyzing two factors: (1) frequency, or how often product-related behaviors occur, and (2) perceived utility, or how often and rewarding a behavior is in the user’s mind.  A behavior with enough frequency and perceived utility enters the ‘habit zone’, making it more likely to become a default behavior in the future.

The Hook Model, which is the central framework of this book, provides companies with a process for connecting a user’s problem to their own product or solution in a way that can form a habit.  The model has four phases: (1) trigger, (2) action, (3) variable reward, and (4) investment.

2. External And Internal Triggers Initiate Action

Triggers are the first phase in the Hook Model.  They come in two types—external and internal.  External triggers tell us what to do next by placing information within our environment.  Internal triggers tell us what to do next through associations stored in our memory.

Companies can utilize four types of external triggers to initiate user behavior, including:

• Paid Triggers – Such as advertising, search engine marketing, or influencers.
• Earned Triggers – Such as media coverage, viral content, or app store placement.
• Relationship Triggers – Like user invitations, referral marketing, or social alerts.
• Owned Triggers – Such as email lists, app notifications, or other opt-in alerts.

These external triggers are only the first step.  The ultimate goal is to propel users into the Hook Model so that, after successive cycles, they no longer need further prompting.  When users form habits, they are cued by internal triggers rather than by ongoing external triggers.

Internal triggers manifest automatically in our minds.  Emotions, particularly negative ones, can greatly influence our daily routines.  Feelings of boredom, loneliness, frustration, confusion, and indecisiveness often instigate a slight pain or irritation that prompts an almost mindless action or response.

Users who find a product that alleviates their pain will form strong, positive associations with the product over time.  Therefore, to build a habit-forming product, designers need to understand which user emotions relate to their product and how to leverage external triggers to initiate the Hook Model.

3. Users Take Action Based On Anticipation of a Reward

Action is critical to successful habit formation.  According to the Fogg Behavior Model, there are three requirements to initiate action: (1) the user must have sufficient motivation, (2) the user must have the ability to complete the desired action, and (3) a trigger must be present to initiate the action.

Motivation defines the level of desire the user has for taking the relevant action.  All humans are motivated to (1) seek pleasure and avoid pain, (2) seek hope and avoid fear, and (3) seek social acceptance and avoid rejection. The right motivators create action by offering the promise of desirable outcomes.

Ability comes down to the steps required to complete an action and the user’s willingness, or capacity for completing those steps.  There are six factors that influence a task’s difficulty:

• Time – How long it takes to complete an action.
• Money – The fiscal cost of taking an action.
• Physical Effort – The amount of labor involved in taking the action.
• Brain Cycles – The level of mental effort and focus required to take an action.
• Social Deviance – How socially accepted the behavior is by others.
• Non-routine – How much the action matches or disrupts existing routines.

Consider which of these six elements is having the greatest impact on preventing a user from completing a desired action. Are they short on time? Is the behavior too expensive? Is the user exhausted after a long day of work? The easier an action is to complete, the more likely a user is to do it. And then they can continue through to the next phase of the Hook Model.

As a general rule of thumb, the greatest return on investment usually comes from increasing a product’s ease of use.  Increasing motivation is expensive and time consuming. Therefore, reducing the effort required to perform an action is more effective than increasing someone’s desire to do it.

4. Variable Rewards Increase User Cravings & Attention

The third step in the Hook Model is the variable reward phase. This is where we solve the user’s problem and reinforce their motivation for taking action in the previous phase.  Note, what causes people to act is not the sensation they receive from the reward itself, but the need to alleviate the craving for that reward.

Also, to hold someone’s attention, products must have an ongoing degree of novelty.  This is where variable rewards come into play.  Without variability, rewards become predictable and stale. In contrast, novelty sparks our interest, makes us pay attention, and drives our hunger for future rewards.

Habit-forming products utilize one or more of the following three types of variable rewards:

• Tribe Rewards – The search for social rewards that make us feel accepted, attractive, important, and connected with other people.
• Hunt Rewards – The search for material resources and information.
• Self Rewards – The search for intrinsic rewards of mastery, competence, and completion.

It’s important to correctly match the right variable reward to the action from the previous phase.  Such rewards must fit into the narrative of why the product is used and align with the user’s internal triggers and motivation. They must satisfy the user’s needs while leaving them hungry to re-engage.

Points, badges, and leaderboards can be effective rewards, but only if they scratch the user’s itch. When there is a mismatch between the customer’s problem and a company’s assumed solution, no amount of gamification will help spur engagement.  Only by understanding what truly matters to users can a company correctly match the right variable reward to their intended behavior.

5. User Investment Leads To Increased Product Usage

The fourth step in the Hook Model is the investment phase. Unlike the action phase, which delivers immediate gratification, the investment phase is driven by a user’s anticipation of future rewards.  Therefore, this step involves prompting users to put something of value into the system.

Here are five ways a user can store value within a product or service:

• Content – A growing collection of information, interactions, memories, and experiences can make a service more valuable over time.
• Data – Adding personal data into the system, either passively or actively, can make users feel more committed to a product or service over time.
• Followers – Taking time to follow the right people, and build a following for oneself, can improve a service and make it costly to leave.
• Reputation – Time invested in building a personal reputation as a buyer, seller, or member of a community can make users more likely to stick with a service.
• Skill – Once users have invested time and effort to learn how to use a product or service, they are less likely to switch to a competing product. 

Note, the investment phase requires careful planning.  Designers must consider whether users have the motivation and ability to make the intended investment.  It’s generally best to stage the investments you want users to make into small chunks of work. Start with easy tasks and building up from there.

Also, such investments should only come after the variable reward phase. That way users are primed to reciprocate by making their first small investment into the product or service.  Done properly, such investments will increase the likelihood of users passing through the Hook Model again and again.

6. Are You A Facilitator, Peddler, Entertainer, or Dealer?

The Hook Model is designed to connect a user’s problem with a designer’s solution frequently enough to form a habit.  It’s a framework for serving user needs through long-term engagement.  But of course, the creation of habits can be a force for positive change or for creating harmful addictions.

Therefore, we must consider the following two questions before proceeding:

• Would I use the product myself?
• Will the product help users materially improve their lives?

If you find yourself squirming as you review these questions, or needing to qualify or justify your answers, stop and be honest with yourself.  It’s only by accurately addressing these questions that you can assess which of the following four categories best describe your situation:

The Dealer – Those that do not plan to use the product and do not believe it will help others are often only in it to make money.  Such an approach has the lowest chance of finding long-term success, and it creates a morally precarious position for the business.  This is exploitation and it should be avoided.

The Entertainer – If you’re creating something that you plan to use, but that is unlikely to improve users’ lives, you are likely making entertainment.  Such a venture can be successful, but without making the lives of others better in some way, this approach often lacks staying power.

The Peddler – If you’re creating something that you believe will help others, but that you do not plan on using yourself, there is an increased risk of failure.  There’s nothing inherently wrong with peddling, many companies do so out of purely altruistic ambitions.  However the odds of success, when it comes to solving a problem for which you don’t have first-hand experience, is depressingly low.

The Facilitator – If you’re creating something that you intend to use, and that you believe makes life better for those that use it, you are likely facilitating a healthy or productive habit.  This approach has the highest chance of success because you are more likely to understand the needs of your users.

After The Hooked Book Summary

This book summary of  Hooked  covered six valuable insights for creating unprompted user engagement. However, it’s not meant to be a substitute for reading the book. That’s because the original text provides a much richer and more detailed learning experience.

So if you’re a founder, product manager, marketer, or anyone else interested in creating habit-forming products, consider picking up a copy of the book. Hooked is available from Amazon and Apple Books .

Looking for something else? Consider checking out  the best product management books or the best startup books to find your next great read.

Rick Kettner

Rick is an avid reader and lifelong entrepreneur. He co-founded popular online music education platforms including Drumeo, Pianote, and Guitareo. He now spends much of his time sharing tips on business strategy, marketing, and entrepreneurship.

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• Book Review: Hooked – How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Jochem | Jun 23, 2020 | Books , Business , Entrepreneurship | 0 comments

What makes you check your phone 100 times per day? Why do you always use Google instead of Bing? Or why do lay awake at night, scrolling through your Instagram feed, even when you know you should be sleeping?

In Hooked: How to Build Habit Building Products , Nir Eyal provides the exact model that many digital products use to make us want to use it. According to the author, all these apps use the Hook model — finding ways to intertwine their usage into our daily lives, routines and habits.

The book has been praised by many well-known entrepreneurs, such as Eric Ries (the Lean Startup), Dave McClure (500 Startups) and Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten (The Next Web). So clearly, Hooked is a great read for company founders, particularly when you want to dive into the psychology of user interaction and making your app or product ‘stick’. So if you want a quick overview of the model without needing to read the entire book, you can find a summary and my book review of Hooked below.

Highlights of Hooked: The Hook Model

In summary, the book Hooked provides a model to ‘hook’ users. It’s a model to make them come again and again.

When you read this, you may think that the intention of using the hook model is making users addicted. But after some correspondence with the author, I realized that addiction in this sense , is a combination of factors, of which the product (or drug, or whatever it is) is just one.

As you can see in the image below, the Hook model consists of four different steps. The Trigger, the Action, the Variable Reward, and the Investment. Specifically, users are:

• Triggered to open your app or product;
• After which they perform an action within the product;
• This results in a variable reward;
• And finally they make an investment to improve their experience.

This is a simple example of the Hooked model; in the book, the author expands on each different section — which I will do here shortly too.

The Hook Model starts with the trigger. In this example, the trigger was a notification on your phone. According to Eyal, the trigger can be both internal and external.

In this case, the Instagram notification is an external trigger. Similarly, an advertisement, email, or even word-of-mouth marketing may be the external trigger you need as a user to start engaging with a product.

Alternatively, a trigger can be internal. This is the case when users have already gone through the Hooked model (and the circle in the image above) once or several times. You yourself trigger a need or want to open the Instagram app, without any external interference.

What is the action you want a user to take in/with your product? The goal of the product team is to (among many other things) make the action as easy as possible.

In both this model and life in general, an action consists of three aspects: motivation, ability, and trigger. This is also called the Fogg Behavioral Model, represented as B = MAT. Take a simple example: the behavior (or action) of doing groceries. If you do groceries you need to be 1) motivated to do so, 2) able to do so, and 3) you need a certain trigger. So if it’s Friday night and you don’t feel like going outside (motivation), if your car has stopped working (ability) or if you have a full fridge (trigger), you’re not very likely to go to the supermarket.

Variable Reward

Interestingly, a reward a user gets from a product should not be the same every time. Just like with gambling, there should be a variable reward — sometimes you get X, sometimes you get Y, or perhaps sometimes you get nothing at all.

Preferably, a product has so-called “infinite variability”. You can find this infinite variability in the un-ending scroll of products like Instagram, Reddit, Pinterest or even certain news sites. You never know what you can expect, making the product new and exciting, every time you open it.

Users making an investment into your product helps them get back to the product in several ways. First, investing in the product usually improves the product itself. For instance, LinkedIn adding more information to their profile makes the entire platform more useful for other users.

In addition, one bias (or fallacy) we all face is the sunk cost fallacy. I’ve mentioned cognitive biases before, and the sunk cost fallacy is the idea that when you put more effort or energy into something, it becomes more difficult to let it go or step away. In this sense, a user’s investment in your product will make it more likely for him/her to stick with your product, even if there are better alternatives on the market.

Applying the Lessons of Hooked

Whenever you read a business book, it’s important to look at how to apply it to your specific case. Luckily, Nir Eyal provides several questions and small to-do’s at the end of every chapter that you can use to apply the Hooked model to your product.

Specifically, you could look at your product (or service) and answer questions such as:

• Which internal trigger does your user experience most frequently?
• Which resources are limiting your users’ ability to accomplish the tasks [or actions] that will become habits?
• What are 3 ways your product might increase users’ search for variable rewards?
• What ‘bit of work’ [or investment] are your users doing to increase their likelihood of returning?

These are just a couple of questions from the book; if you truly want to apply this model to your product, I recommend reading (and answering) all of them.

Hooked Book Review by an entrepreneur

In my opinion, the Hooked model and book is particularly relevant for entrepreneurs and company founders building B2C digital products. Whether you’re building a new kind of social media platform, a videogame, an app to order groceries, or something else, the Hooked model can help you to increase the chances of your users returning to your product. That said, the ideas in the book are useful for B2B products too, but it really depends on your product whether the model is relevant.

While the book’s theory isn’t entirely ground-breaking, I think it’s very useful to have a model which you can apply to the interactions of your users with your product. As founders or product managers, we often talk about a customer journey , which is a good way of looking at it. However, by using the Hooked model, you may find new improvements you can make to that customer journey, that you wouldn’t have found otherwise.

This particularly applies to the ‘variable reward’ and ‘investment’ steps of the Hooked circle. Most people designing a product know the trigger leading to a user interaction, and the action they want their users to take. However, creating a variable reward, and ensuring that a user goes beyond ‘just interacting’ to actually investing in the product, is something that often comes as an after-thought. Applying this model to your product, makes you really think about the different ways and new functionalities you could implement to enable these two steps.

Overall, I found the book quite enjoyable. As is usually the case with books that offer a model, it is not entirely necessary to read the whole book. By reading this article, you already have a fair understanding of the model, and otherwise you could simply read some extra material on the author’s blog . However, reading the entire book does make everything sink in better, and if you want to apply the model directly to your product, it may be useful to get yourself a copy .

Note that I only write about books that I’ve actually read and products I’ve actually used — this post contains an affiliate link from Amazon; as an Amazon Associate I may earn a small commission if you click and buy the product in question.

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• March 12, 2021

HOOKED Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions By Michael Moss

As an entree to Michael Moss’s excellent new book, “Hooked: Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions,” try this experiment. Imagine or — even better — place two bowls in front of you: one with potato chips; the other with whole walnuts. Make sure they are both good quality brands and fresh from a never-opened bag. Sample a walnut first. Enjoy how its initial slightly bitter crunch transforms into something soft, buttery, faintly woodsy. Next munch a potato chip. Its flavor is less complex than the walnut’s, but every chip instantly delivers an intense combination of salt, sugar and fat. They are so crispy you can hear them snap between your teeth, and then they miraculously dissolve into nothingness on your tongue, making you want another. And another. And another.

Now ask yourself which is more likely to make you fat. From a purely nutritional perspective the answer is easy: the walnuts. According to the nutrition labels helpfully provided on both packages, an ounce of walnuts contains 186 calories, 25 percent more than the 150 calories delivered by an ounce of potato chips. To be sure, walnuts pack more protein and fiber and less salt, but if weight gain is your worry, you should eat the potato chips.

Obviously, it is preposterous to consider potato chips less fattening than walnuts — because potato chips are among the most addictive foods on the planet, along with French fries, pizza, cheeseburgers and Oreos. Too many of us can’t help eating too much of this stuff. And that’s the chief motivation for “Hooked,” which is in many ways a sequel to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist’s 2013 tour de force, “Salt Sugar Fat: How the Food Giants Hooked Us.” That book exposed how multinational food companies churn out processed foods that are both cheap and alluring. “Hooked” asks how food manufacturers manipulate these foods to addict us, helping along a national crisis in which 40 percent of Americans are obese.

No one questions that the nutritional quality of foods has health consequences, but “Hooked” redirects our attention to the arguably more important question of quantity . To do so, Moss first focuses necessarily on the brain, the true fountainhead of addiction, which he defines (using the words of a Philip Morris C.E.O.) as “a repetitive behavior that some people find difficult to quit.”

If you are not a neuroscientist, you’ll be relieved by Moss’s jargon-free approach to this complex biology. Without going into much detail, he describes how foods can be engineered to trigger the brain’s “on switch” (mostly the neurotransmitter, dopamine) and inhibit its “off switch” (a region called the prefrontal cortex). These switches and the instincts that turn them on and off have deep evolutionary origins that likely helped our ancestors survive and thrive when food was scarce.

And, wow, are the hard-wired instincts to eat these foods powerful — more so than those that push us toward addictive drugs like heroin and nicotine. Even seeing the pictures of certain foods can cause us to salivate. In unforgettable language, Moss describes how less than a second after you bite into a luscious chocolate or a glazed doughnut, flavor sensations derived from a combination of sugar and fat, as well as other smells and tastes, hit your brain, interact with memories and release a flood of neurotransmitters that stimulate and perpetuate fundamental cravings.

We find out how Big Food innovates to manipulate and intensify these addiction-inducing sensations. We also learn how multinational food companies, in gastro-Orwellian fashion, hook us by expertly tapping into our memories, introducing endless new varieties, and combining sensations and ingredients rarely seen together in nature like sugar and fat, brittle and soft, sweet and salty. None of us are immune.

According to Moss, Big Food is relentlessly and cynically striving to maximize their “share of stomach,” industry parlance for how much of the food we eat they can supply. Beyond hunting for genes that predispose us to particular cravings or quantifying exactly how much sugar our brains prefer, these corporate peddlers perniciously play with serving sizes on nutrition labels to deceive us into thinking we are making healthy choices.

To trick us to eat more they also lure us in with low prices, dazzling packaging, convenience and trumped-up variety. One example among many: Differently colored M&M’s taste the same but dupe our brains to consume more than if they were all just brown. Perhaps most cunningly, Big Food has also acquired many major brands of processed diet foods like Weight Watchers and Lean Cuisine. One has to admit it’s clever to make money helping us get fat and then profit from our efforts (usually futile) to lose weight.

All in all, “Hooked” blends investigative reporting, science and foodie writing to argue that the processed food industry is no different from tobacco companies like Philip Morris that for decades lied about the harmful and addictive nature of cigarettes. In Philip Morris’s case they were the same company (until recently, Philip Morris owned Kraft and General Foods).

Which leads to a question: Who is at fault? No one is forced to eat at McDonald’s or drink Dr Pepper, and few Americans are unaware that a salad for lunch is healthier than a cheeseburger with fries. But Moss’s argument is that free will is an illusion, at least for certain foods.

He’s right. It is sometimes said that for some of us sugar is as addictive as cocaine, but from an evolutionary biological perspective, cocaine is actually as addictive as sugar, because it takes advantage of ancient mechanisms we inherited from our distant ancestors that helped them acquire rare but needed calories. To stay healthy in our current, modern food system, consumers have to overcome instincts and make choices over which we have little control.

Moss’s attention to food addiction should open eyes and convert some free market advocates. On legal grounds, Big Food may be safe in court for now, but their actions raise ethical questions. Should we judge companies solely by their profits or by how they affect the world? Regardless of debates about the law and free will, is it acceptable to market to children breakfast cereals like Cotton Candy Cap’n Crunch, which is nearly half sugar? These and many other harmful habit-forming foods have fattened corporate bank accounts at the cost of fattening hundreds of millions of Americans, contributing to countless premature deaths and debilitating illnesses as well as costing trillions of dollars. Even if you don’t consume these foods, you are paying big time for their consequences.

“Hooked” can also help us pay more attention to the relationship between food quantity and quality. Over the last few decades modern, westernized attitudes toward food have increasingly focused on nutrition labels that inform us how many grams of saturated fat, fiber and other stuff are in the foods we buy. These labels can make many highly processed foods seem deceptively harmless compared with more calorie-dense natural foods like avocados, salmon and walnuts. Yet how many people overeat unprocessed wholesome foods?

Nutritionist perspectives on food combined with the challenges of losing weight also generate confusion over the relative merits of alternative diets, sometimes promoting new kinds of disordered eating as we Google the glycemic index of muffins or bananas, and worry about whether chocolate, eggs or peanuts are “good” or “bad.”

I’ve done my share of Googling and fretting, but I’m done with this. One doesn’t need a degree in nutrition science to recognize that just about every traditional, nonprocessed diet from every culture on the planet that isn’t loaded with junk food is probably generally healthy. What’s more, like those walnuts, those diets are tastier too.

Daniel E. Lieberman is a professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and the author of “Exercised: Why Something We Never Evolved to Do Is Healthy and Rewarding.”

HOOKED Food, Free Will, and How the Food Giants Exploit Our Addictions By Michael Moss 304 pp. Random House. $28.

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Hooked: Book Summary & Review

Hooked studies “addictive products” and explains what entrepreneurs and marketers can do to make their own products addictive.

Bullet Summary

How habits form, the most successful products form habits, the hook stages, two questions for ethical concerns, real-life applications.

• Get other users to provide the first triggers for you: you get free ads and network effect
• Make the first action to engage with your product as simple and quick as possible
• To make addictive products give variable rewards

Full Summary

About the Author : Nir Eyal earned an MBA at Stanford University and founded an advertising business with some of his fellow students placing advertisements on Facebook. Eyal grew interested in psychology and behavioral engineering, and “ Hooked ” is the result of his research.

Habits form through repetition, and the more you do them, the more automated they become.

Indeed repeated action forms pathways in our brains. And those pathways will stay there even when we manage to stop a habit.

That’s why, sadly, most alcoholics will start drinking again within one year of finishing a detox program.

Products that become habits in their users have a marked advantage over the competition.

Users use them more often and stick for the long term. Sometimes forever. Even if it’s not always good for the users, the habit-forming products will keep exercising a strong pull over the users that will make it hard for the user to ditch.

Habit-forming products also have high entry barriers. For a new product to take its users, it must be much better. And sometimes even when they are markedly better it’s still not enough.

Take the QWERTY keyboard, for example. It is by far not the best, but no other keyboard layout can usurp QWERTY’s stronghold among its users because that would mean getting used to a new layout, and it’s not going to happen any time soon.

Nir Eyal says that for a product to hook its users, it needs to go through four stages:

• Trigger : the event that makes us try the product (initially it’s external, then it becomes external)
• Action : what do we need to do to use the product
• Reward : deliver pleasure
• Investment : what we give in exchange for pleasure (ie.: money, time, information)

1. Triggers

The trigger initially is external because we don’t know about the product.

But over time the pleasure of the reward builds internal mental triggers.

The most frequent internal triggers are emotions, and most often negative ones. Such as boredom, loneliness, confusion, or fear.

However, the reward is often able to give a positive jolt (often a dopamine hit).

Once we get that dopamine a few times we form pleasure links between a certain action and a reward we get. Over time we will automatically repeat the cycle over and over by ourselves. When that happens, we’re hooked.

The more popular and catchy a product becomes, the more the trigger can be started by other users. Social networks, for example, add people thanks to the invitation from already existing users. Free advertisement.

To take action an individual must be sufficiently motivated and able to take action.

To be effective a trigger must offer a simple choice of action. The simpler the action to perform, the lower the entry barrier, and the more people will perform the needed action.

What makes people really hooked is the itch for the reward. The itch is more important than the reward itself.

And the best way to hook people and keep that itch strong is with unpredictable rewards.

A reward which is always present, and always the same, grows us bored. It’s the anticipation and excitement of unpredictable rewards that hooks us.

Think of Facebook for example. You check it looking if there is a red notification of a like or a message. But it’s not always there, and that’s one of the key variables that keep us going back for more. It’s similar to when we scroll our feed. Lots of time is just boring stuff. But sometimes we’ll find something awesome that makes us laugh, excites, or even bother us or saddens us.

4. Investment

When we invest in something we feel it’s more valuable.

And investment also works to justify in our mind that what we invest in must be worth it. So if we’ve done something many times we tell ourselves that it must be valuable.

Producing and working on products that get people hooked can raise some ethical questions. Nir Eyal proposes two questions to test if your habit-forming concept is ethical or not:

• Does your product enhance people’s lives?
• Would you use the product yourself?

• If You Wanna Get Stuff Done: Don’t Get Hooked

If you’re a high achiever who wants to be productive and get things done, you must control your hooking machine. Get un-hooked at unproductive stuff and get hooked on what drives you towards your goals.

• I wasn’t convinced about the investment stage

I wasn’t convinced by the fourth stage of forming habits. So people get hooked to, say, Facebook because they “invest” scrolling on their feed? It doesn’t seem to make much sense to me.

I think that if you prod people for answers, they are quite honest that scrolling on their Facebook feed is pretty much useless. It’s just that they can’t help it.

Good Overview of How Apps & Social Networks Work Hooked is a good book to understand how some apps and most social media hook people in.

Short and To The Point Little time and space waste. I appreciate that.

I found “ Hooked ” to be OK.

It’s good, but I personally didn’t find much new wisdom.

However, it might be different for you. Especially if you haven’t read much on psychology yet, or if you are interested in habit-forming technologies for entrepreneurial ventures, then this might be a good read for you.

Read the best psychology books or get the book on Amazon

About The Author

Lucio Buffalmano

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• Integrations

‘Hooked’ by Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover

The hooked model in practice, the creepy background to the model and ethical concerns, final thoughts.

Added someone as a friend. Liked a photo. Commented on another one. Retweeted a video. Exchanged emojis with. Swiped left.

These are some of the actions millions of people carry out a total of billions of times on their mobile phones. They are also the basis on which some of the biggest brands in the world thrive. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Tinder, Linkedin and the like all became what they are thanks to techniques employed that make users come back to their products multiple times a day. These platforms get their users ‘hooked’ and by doing so, increase the lifetime customer value, achieve higher growth rates, make it more difficult for their customers to shift to other brands and erect an entry barrier for the new players in the market.

In order to shed light on how some products manage to gain a cult-like following while some don’t, Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover dive deep into the mechanics of habit formation in their book Hooked . The authors introduce the Hook Model, which consists of four steps: Trigger, action, variable reward and investment.

Triggers are both internal and external and they refer to the things that cause the itch pushing us to use a product over and over.

Action is the actual behavior itself, which is done in anticipation of a reward. The easier and more fun the action, the higher the likelihood that the user will want to repeat it.

Variable reward is the unpredictability associated with the usage action and this turns every interaction with the product into a new adventure.

Investment involves the user giving the product a bigger place in her life. By bringing in more people, sharing more data with the platform or spending more money to upgrade to a more premium service, she makes it more likely that she will come back and go through the four steps of the Hook Model another time. The fact that we value more the products in which we invested significant time and effort is just one of the tricks our brain plays on us.

However, those tricks seem to be an integral part of marketing, customer acquisition and retention efforts these days. As Eyal and Hoover take us through the stages of the Hook Model and explain the reasoning behind each step, a chilling feeling sets in. Getting people addicted to something always involves taking advantage of particular weaknesses or cognitive biases we as human beings are particularly vulnerable to. Your favorite coffeehouse, for example, is taking advantage of one such bias (called “The Endowed Progress Effect”) when they gift you a punch card with two holes already punched, with the promise of a free cup of coffee when you get to ten punched holes. They could just as well give you a card with eight unpunched slots but the tactic with two pre-punched holes achieved a completion rate 82 percent higher than the other, as Eyal and Hoover quote from an experiment .

The possibility that corporate giants might have figured out all our cognitive biases and have us all wrapped around their fingers is a disturbing one. Ethical conduct on the part of companies is what can shield customers from the harm they are not even aware of. Hooked dedicates considerable space to a precautionary discussion of the role ethics should play in habit formation. Where does marketing end and manipulation start? Does the goal of creating an addictive product justify anything and everything?

Eyal and Hoover bring to the fore two questions for product designers to use as a yardstick in deciding whether they crossed the red line in habit formation: “Would I use this product myself?” and “Does this product improve the user’s life?” Products for which both answers are “yes” are the ones you can get behind. On the other hand, pushing a product that wouldn’t improve the user’s life and you wouldn’t use yourself could simply be deemed exploitation. As legislation catches up with times, one can expect that this sort of exploitation of people’s cognitive weaknesses for material gain will have legal implications, too.

Hooked reveals the magic touch that turns brands into integral parts of our daily lives. It is also a guide for product designers and growth marketers, full of hints on little adjustments you can implement in your funnel and make a big impact on customer usage rates. The questions under the ‘Do This Now’ section at the end of each chapter provide a good way of self-reflection and honest assessment of your product. If you think your product is underachieving, Hooked might be a good starting point to chart a new route.

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Review: ‘Hooked’ by Emily McIntire

From international bestselling author 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. Hooked is a dark contemporary romance and the first complete standalone in the Never After Series: A collection of fractured fairy tales where the villains get the happy ever after. It is not a literal retelling and not fantasy. Hooked features mature themes and content that may not be suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised. For all content warnings, check the author's website.

I’ve been meaning to read one of Emily McIntire’s books for a while now and finally purchased the first book in her Never After series. Lately, I’ve been listening to my books more because I don’t have time to sit and read a physical book, and I’m glad I borrowed the audiobook of this book. The narrators chosen for this book made the book more enjoyable to listen to instead of reading it. Unfortunately, I think if I had read it, I would have DNF’d it. Here’s the thing: I enjoyed the first half of the book, but the second half went downhill for me.

I liked the storyline behind this book and how it’s a fractured fairy tale based on Hook this time and not Peter. Hook is still the villain, and Emily made sure to keep his evil qualities, which I definitely liked about him. She also kept the revenge plot between Hook and Peter, but she did throw in a twist, where Wendy is Peter’s daughter. Wendy is the innocent young girl in the story who craves her father’s attention and wants him to acknowledge he cares about her and her brother, but unfortunately, Peter is not that type of father. He’s all about business, and Hook wants to take Peter down for what he did to him, and the best way to do it is to take advantage of Peter’s daughter, Wendy, and claim her innocence. Wendy is drawn to Hook because she doesn’t have anyone else in her life who cares, but she should be running from him, especially with what he has planned for her and what he does to her in this book.

This book had the normal things I would expect in a Dark Romance, such as kidnapping, having a morally gray character who is an a-hole and wants revenge and will do anything to get that revenge, plus the usual sexual kinks I find in these types of books (one of them being: breathplay). Still, it wasn’t as dark as other books I’ve read in this subgenre. The first half was well done, introducing the MCs and explaining the vengeful plot that Hook wanted, and it was deliciously smutty. Still, once that second half came around, it became rushed and cringeworthy. Also, I was not too fond of Wendy’s character because she was naive at times and way too innocent, in my opinion. She did redeem herself towards the end, but it was already too late for me to like her. I think if the second half had gone a different route and not been rushed, I would have enjoyed the book more.

As I stated above in my review, I listened to the book and was glad I did because the narrators chosen were perfect for the voices of Hook and Wendy. Their voices and acting were fabulously done, even during the cringeworthy second half. The narrators for this book are Felicity Munroe and Rupert Hawthorne, and it was my first book audiobook with these two and won’t be my last. Rupert’s accent was swoon-worthy. (Don’t tell the hubs, even though he knows I love listening to books with narrators that have accents.)

Will I read the next book in the series? Yes, because even though I didn’t enjoy this one as much as I wanted, it doesn’t mean I shouldn’t give the second book a chance. I like the idea of the villains getting their happily-ever-afters because villains are just misunderstood characters that just need us readers to find out their back story on why they are villains in the first place.

Story Rating : ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️.5

Steam/Spice Rating : 🌶🌶🌶.5

Standalone or Part of Series : It’s part of the Never After series, but each book can be read as a standalone.

Would I recommend this book? I recommend this book to readers who have read Emily McIntire before and like her writing style or are intrigued by the synopsis like I was for this book.

Genre/SubGenre(s) : Romance | Dark Romance | Fantasy Romance

Trope(s)/Element(s) : Fractured Fairytale Retelling | Villain Gets the Girl | Forbidden Romance | Peter Pan Retelling: Wendy + Hook

This post contains affiliate links you can use to purchase the book. If you buy the book using that link, I will receive a small commission from the sale. It will help sponsor future giveaways but costs you nothing extra. You can read the full disclosure underneath the  Privacy Policy .

About Emily McIntire

Emily McIntire is a USA TODAY best selling author known for her Never After Series, where she gives our favorite villains their happily ever afters. With books that range from small town to dark romance, she doesn’t like to box herself into one type of story, but at the core of all her novels is soul deep love. When she’s not writing you can find her enjoying her family, or lost between the pages of a good book.

Website | Twitter | Facebook | Goodreads | Instagram | Bookbub | Newsletter | TikTok

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Hooked Book Review: Never After Book #1 by Emily McIntire

It’s been a while since I’ve read a dark romance. When I heard that the Never After series was a reimagining of the fairy tales we all know, but starring the villains, I was immediately interested.

Most romance readers love a bad boy, but before I started reading I had a lot of questions. How do you take a villain and make him sexy? How dark were these novels going to be? Before the book started, the author mentioned that she had a list of trigger warnings on her website so that readers could prepare themselves.

I knew that I was going to need to read the first book Hooked in order to find answers to those questions. So here is my Hooked Book Review.

Spoiler Alert: I didn’t love this book and thought it was kind of dumb.

But this is such a popular book that a lot of people seem to love, so I’m just going to chalk it up to being not for me. If you’d like to read more of my book discussions, you can view them here.

What is the book Hooked about?

Hooked tells the story of Captain James Hook (often referred to as just Hook) who is obsessed with destroying his enemy, Peter Michaels. The two have longstanding beef, as Peter is the one responsible for killing James’ father. But after a chance encounter with someone who is very important to Peter, James comes up with the perfect plan.

One evening at James’s bar, The Jolly Roger, James is viewing the security footage and sees a beautiful young woman enter his establishment. She’s young, cute, and beautiful. But more importantly, she’s Peter’s twenty-year-old daughter Wendy. Although Wendy doesn’t have the best relationship with her wealthy cold father, Peter loves her very much and refers to her as his little shadow.

James knows that seducing Wendy Michaels during her spontaneous night of fun would be the perfect taste of vengeance. When Michael finds out what he has done, it will ruin him.

But while Hooked is a story of revenge, it is also a love story. Wendy is drawn into their toxic relationship and soon finds herself falling in love. But there’s no chance of her and Hook living happily ever after without her father finding out, and without Hook getting his revenge.

Throughout the story, the author throws in Peter Pan references and characters to help tie the whole fairy tale reimagining together.

In this first complete standalone novel in the Never After series, the characters must deal with internal struggles and no ones happiness is guaranteed.

About Emily McIntire

Booktok sensation Emily McIntire has written quite a few books, but her most popular series is the Never After series. Her books have grown quite a following on booktok, which is a section of tiktok where content creators rave and rant over their favorite books. She writes in quite a few different subgenres of the romance genre.

How Many Books are in the Never After series by Emily McIntire?

There are currently 5 books in the Never After series and each book focuses on a different fairy tale villain. I’ve only Hooked, which is book 1. But judging by the crime and nefarious activities going on in James’s organization, I have a feeling the rest of the books will be just as exciting.

Is Hooked worth reading?

I do not think Hooked is worth reading and would not recommend it to any of my friends. I just don’t dig that kind of hero. In this peter pan retelling the Hero is Captain Hook and the Heroine is Wendy Darling. Their addictive love affair is toxic to say the least, and honestly… Hook is pretty slimy from the very beginning. I like a bad boy as much as the next reader, and of course there’s something sexy about an accent.

But that’s really all I could get behind. Hook’s actions are gross and domineering. I want to give Wendy a pass for falling for him because she’s so young but then I read the epilogue and was like ugh.

How Old Should you Be to Read Hooked?

In my opinion, you should be 18 years or older to read Hooked by Emily McIntire. It’s a romance novel, but it’s got dark undertones and mature themes. There are also quite a few sex scenes which may be better suited for an older audience. Reader discretions is advised.You can click here to read the trigger warnings that she shares on her website.

How old is Wendy in Hooked?

Peter’s daughter Wendy is 20 years old at the beginning of Hooked, but she does celebrate her birthday close to the second half of the story. They live in a small town and she works at a local coffee shop, which is where she has one of her first interactions with Hook.

Is Hooked a Dark Romance?

Yes. While Hooked is a fairy tale reimagining of Peter Pan, the main character James is a loose interpretation of Captain Hook. He’s very demanding, very suave, and very horny. He sets his sights on the darling girl and won’t give up until he’s taken what he wants from her. Hooked is a dark contemporary romance with a fantasy twist.

What did I Like About Hooked?

I do like the idea of retelling a fairy tale from a different perspective or in a different way. It’s an interesting way to revisit a classic tale. Although my high school put on Peter Pan during my junior year, I only loosely remembered the story so it was fun to revisit it in this book.

I liked how the drugs (or, I mean… habit-forming products) were called “pixie dust”. And I liked how James’s boat was called Tiger Lily. All of the references and the tie ins to the Peter Pan story were pretty clever. Especially how James had Smee working on his boat as his right hand man.

I liked the relationship between Wendy and her brother Jon. I have a brother who is four years younger than me so I related a lot to their close relationship. Although this book is a retelling of Peter Pan in a way, it also felt like an original story.

What I Didn’t Like About Hooked

When it comes down to it, James just felt cheesy. It was weird how the second he saw Wendy over the security camera at the bar, his penis started twitching. What? Is he really that horny that a grainy security camera footage turns him on?

I don’t like how he treated Wendy. She seemed smart at first and then she quickly succumbed to his “charm”. Even when she found out about his revenge plot, she forgave him way too quickly. It just felt rushed and ridiculous. I get that she’s impressed by dashing Captain Hook, but it didn’t make much sense to me how she seemed to give up on her original discernment of him.

But then again, she did grow up pretty sheltered. As a grown woman, she hasn’t been as exposed to things as other people. I just have a lot of thoughts. There has to be a better way to make the two characters fall in love than to make Wendy seem helpless and like she just needs James in order to survive.

In Conclusion

I think you have to be a certain kind of romance fan to really enjoy this book. Most of us reading romance are looking for happy endings and cute moments between characters. But darker romances are just different. In this sort of book, the drama consists of crime and drug addiction and revenge. The stakes are high and the characters are very flawed. While Wendy’s sudden emotional attachment felt forced to me, other readers may be into that kind of thing.

We all like different books and this one just wasn’t for me! I’m always going to give you a realistic look at books on my blog so that you can decide whether you want to check them out or not. And if you disagree with my thoughts on this book, I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments section.

But wait, there’s more!

If you enjoyed today’s book discussion, you can check out more of my reviews here .

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Delighting in all things bookish, book review: hooked: a never after novel by emily mcintire, about the book:.

Once Upon A Time, there was a little boy. His belly full of laughter, his life full of joy. Until one day, something changed; stripped his innocence away.

The hole inside making space for the devil to come and play. His dreams gone forever, he grew up way too fast.

An endless night of crocodiles, and watches made of glass. He grew into a villain, the taste of vengeance on his tongue. Craving to make his enemies pay for the misdeeds they had done.

Instead he found a darling girl, and refused to let her go. For what better way to make the man pay, than to steal his little shadow.

*Hooked is a full-length, complete standalone and the first in The Never After Series: A collection of fractured fairy tales where the villains get the happy ever after. This is a DARK Contemporary romance (not fantasy) featuring mature themes and content that may not be suitable for all audiences. Reader discretion is advised.

Published by NewSouth Books – Bloom Books

Released September 2022

My Thoughts:

I know, I know, not the sort of book you’re used to seeing pop up here. Let me explain…

I’m a Peter Pan fan. I like the darker undercurrent of Peter Pan, the original novel by J.M. Barrie, not the Disney version. So, I’m drawn to anything that even hints at a retelling, which is how I ended up with this one. Also, I like the cover. I probably should have looked into the book description a bit more, or even jumped onto Goodreads and read a few reviews, but I didn’t, I just requested the series and here we are. So, Hooked is not a retelling of Peter Pan, rather, it’s a dark romance/underworld crime novel that draws inspiration from the darkness of the original Peter Pan. It was enough for me to get sucked in.

We have our main character, James Barrie, aka Hook, who is basically a psychopathic criminal thug. Then we have Wendy Michaels, daughter of shady billionaire Peter Michaels, sister to Jon Michaels. Wendy gets called ‘Wendy darling’ by James (Hook) and Peter Michael’s girlfriend/assistant is named Tina-Belle. Hook calls his core gang of thugs The Lost Boys and the drugs they sell pixie-dust. Hook’s uncle, who he brutally slayed in the first page of the novel, was nicknamed Croc, and he was a fan of those ticking fob watches, which are a huge trauma trigger for Hook. You can no doubt see what I mean, with all of these familiar threads and characters. So, while the author has said specifically in the front of the novel that it isn’t a retelling, it does lean heavily on the folklore of Peter Pan. It’s actually not badly done at all. It thought it was quite clever, to be honest, in the way she’s taken the characters and themes from J.M. Barrie’s original Peter Pan and reworked it into this contemporary criminal underworld story.

I’m going to be upfront here, the romance in this did nothing for me. Hook and Wendy form this kind of toxic sexual relationship/trauma bond that made me really uncomfortable, and I don’t mean this in a prudish way because of all the sex scenes. I mean it in the sense that I just don’t like reading about unhealthy relationships, they do nothing for me. I know it’s fiction, but even so, it’s just not my cup of tea. There was a strong Fifty Shades vibe running through this, minus the red room, although Hook did keep Wendy chained up to a wall in a basement for a little bit there…

I have the other two novels in this series, they were sent to me as a bundle to review. I intend on reading them, just not one after the other. These are the sort of books I need to pace myself with and dip into when I’m in the mood to do so. A bit like the way one feels when they want to watch a gangster film, I suppose. The whole criminal underworld side of this story appealed to me far more than the romance, and there was enough of that holding up the story to keep me committed until the end.

Recommended for fans of dark romance.

Thanks to the publisher for the review copy.

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6 thoughts on “ book review: hooked: a never after novel by emily mcintire ”.

I am most definitely intrigued….

Like Liked by 1 person

This is definitely a series you might like!

This one has been in my TBR for a few months and I finally picked it up. I’m really glad I’m not alone in the “man, this relationship is super toxic” camp. I do like the story and the twist on characters I’m familiar with, just could have done with a more balanced approached to the romance.

Yes, exactly! Maybe I just don’t understand the genre… but I’m also glad I’m not alone in this camp!

I actually loved this book. My friend let me borrow their copy and I wanted to read it again so I got my own. I almost never reread books but I loved the plot and and how this story was told. An absolutely amazing book. 10/10

I love it when you can connect with a book like that. Have you/will you read the others in the series?

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Hooked: A Dark, Contemporary Romance (Never After Series) Paperback – September 5, 2021

Purchase options and add-ons.

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.

• Part of series Never After Series
• Print length 338 pages
• Language English
• Publisher Bloom Books
• Publication date September 5, 2021
• Reading age 18 years and up
• Dimensions 5.5 x 0.85 x 8.5 inches
• ISBN-10 1737508370
• ISBN-13 978-1737508373
• See all details

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From the Publisher

Read all of Emily McIntire’s dark and delicious fractured fairy tale reimaginings

Editorial Reviews

About the author.

Emily McIntire is a USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Amazon bestselling author whose stories serve steam, slow burns, and seriously questionable morals. Her books have been translated in over a dozen languages, and span across several subgenres within romance. A stage IV breast cancer thriver, you can find Emily enjoying free time with her family, getting lost in a good book, or redecorating her house depending on her mood.

Product details

• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Bloom Books (September 5, 2021)
• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Paperback ‏ : ‎ 338 pages
• ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1737508370
• ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1737508373
• Reading age ‏ : ‎ 18 years and up
• Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.2 ounces
• Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 0.85 x 8.5 inches
• #1,128 in Romance (Books)

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BOOK REVIEW - Hooked by Emily Mcintire

Malaya Neff

Review of Hooked/Worth a read? No spoilers!

Marie Dubuque

Great writing and chemistry - surprise ending

I Love This Book! Well Written, Great Characters, Good Story

Musical Journeys Thru Cinema

The perfect dark contemporary romance!

ProbablyOffReading

4 Star Review of Hooked (Spoiler Free)

Karina Nelson

Dark Romance Peter Pan Inspired (Open Book) and do check trigger warnings as parts of this book are

Itwasntmi.chi

Customer Review: Very unhappy pages are falling out

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Hooked A Dark and Twisted Romance Is It Worth the Read?

The Total Coverage Review

Customer Review: Wendy and Hooked

About the author

Emily mcintire.

Emily McIntire is a USA Today, Publishers Weekly and Amazon bestselling author whose stories serve steam, slow burns, and seriously questionable morals. Her books have been translated in over a dozen languages, and span across several sub-genres within romance.

A stage IV breast cancer thriver, you can find Emily enjoying free time with her family, getting lost in a good book, or redecorating her house depending on her mood.

Instagram: @itsemilymcintire

Facebook Group: The McInCult

Tiktok: @authoremilymcintire

X: @authoremilym

Never After Series:

Sugarlake Series:

- Beneath the Stars

- Beneath the Stands

- Beneath the Hood

- Beneath the Surface

Standalone:

- Be Still My Heart

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#BookReview Hooked by Emily McIntire @authoremilym @Read_Bloom #ReadBloom #Hooked #NeverAfterSeries #SourcebooksCasa

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.

Gritty, spicy, and suspenseful!

Hooked is a twisty, fervid tale that takes you on a journey into the life of Wendy Michaels, a sweet young woman who finds her life turned upside down after she meets the intense and dangerous James, a nightclub owner and businessman who is not only broody and seductive but driven by an obsessive need for revenge, specifically against her father.

The writing is sultry and intense. The characters are secretive, consumed, and tormented. And the plot told from alternating POVs is an ominous, salacious mix of twists, turns, temptation, desire, deception, mystique, introspection, sizzling chemistry, palpable attraction, violence, depravity, love, and romance.

Overall, Hooked is a tension-filled, dramatic, darkly erotic thrill ride by McIntire that takes slivers of the classic Peter Pan and gives it a creative, sexy, contemporary spin that does a brilliant job of reminding you that sometimes the line between good and evil is often quite blurry and happy-ever-after endings are not always simple and sweet.

This novel is available now.

Pick up a copy from your favourite retailer or from one of the following links.

Thank you to Bloom Books for gifting me a copy in exchange for an honest review.

About Emily McIntire

Emily McIntire is an international and Amazon top 15 best-selling author known for her Never After Series, where she gives our favorite villains their happily ever afters. With books that range from small town to dark romance, she doesn’t like to box herself into one type of story, but at the core of all her novels is soul deep love. When she’s not writing you can find her waiting on her long lost Hogwarts letter, enjoying her family, or lost between the pages of a good book. The author and her family live near Knoxville, TN.

Photo courtesy of Author's Website.

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