Hooked

Catherine Greenman

- 3.9 • 42 Ratings

- $4.99

- $4.99

Thea Galehouse has always known how to take care of herself. With a flighty club-owner mom and a standoffish, recovering-alcoholic dad, Thea has made her own way in her hometown of New York, attending the prestigious and competitive Stuyvesant High School. But one chat with Will, a handsome and witty senior, and she's a goner—completely hooked on him and unable to concentrate on anything else.
Always worried that she loves Will more than he loves her, Thea is pleasantly surprised when their romance weathers his move to college and Will goes out of his way to involve her in his life. But then, Thea misses a period. And that starts Thea and Will on a wild ride that neither of them could have possibly prepared for. When they decide to keep the baby, their concerned parents chip in what they can to keep Will in school and give both teenagers a comfortable place to raise their child. But when a freak accident leaves Thea shaken and threatens to upend their little family altogether, Thea is forced to turn to the last place she would have chosen for comfort: her stiff, uncompromising father.
This smart, touching first novel brims with realistic, beautifully drawn characters, and reminds us that love is never as easy or predictable as we might like it to be.

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY JUN 27, 2011

In this debut effort, Greenman avoids allowing her story to become an issue novel, but unfortunately it comes across as more of a teen pregnancy fantasia. It begins when 17-year-old Thea falls in love with Will, a senior at their elite New York City public school. After Thea becomes pregnant, she initially plans to have an abortion, but changes her mind at the last minute. Despite her first-person narrative, Thea's motivations, along with those of most of Greenman's characters, are frequently opaque. Thea and Will move in together in a rent-controlled sublet (she's gotten into NYU in the meantime) and are given $20,000 by their parents; even after a traumatic accident turns Will and Thea against each other and forces Thea to move in with her father, there's little sense of the enormity of the path Thea has embarked upon or even her feelings toward the son she is so desperate to keep. Despite setbacks, Thea's life feels rather charmed perhaps most of all when her crocheting hobby leads to a business selling $300 bikinis sapping the story of authenticity. Ages 14 up.

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