Hooked

Hooked is a 2021 dark contemporary romance by Emily McIntire, published as a 352-page paperback and later reissued by Bloom Books.

James is built around a grudge. He intends to ruin Peter Michaels, and when Wendy arrives in his bar he takes her for the opening he has been waiting for, planning to use her and discard her. Wendy has spent most of her life shut away by a rich, unfeeling father, and one ordinary night with friends puts her in the path of a man whose attention is dangerous and whose interest she cannot put down.

The complication is internal to the plot: as the affair develops, James's organisation starts to fracture and a search for a traitor becomes urgent, which turns his revenge into a decision he can no longer make cleanly. The book is part of the wave of dark romance that circulated through online readership before trade paperback editions followed, and it is written for readers who want the villain's point of view and an ending earned rather than assumed. The names carry the retelling openly, and the question the book puts to itself is whether Wendy is falling for the man or for the monster.