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ASIN: B0F329C7Y3 ID #116037 |
Hooked: A Thriller (Katrina & Goode Book 1) (Rated: 18+)
Product Type: Kindle StoreReviewer: Jeff  Review Rated: 18+ | Amazon's Price: Price N/A
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Further Comments... | ||
I was so excited to read this book. Not since last year's "Gemini Blue" was I so certain that I had found a trashy novel that was going to be an delightful disaster of a book to read. Unfortunately, I was expecting a "delightful disaster" but it only ended up being one of those things. First, allow me to give you a condensed version of the Amazon blurb: A journalist and cop fight a sexual attraction as they join forces to expose a layered scheme of dark and dangerous secrets. When investigative reporter Katrina Chopin and surfing homicide detective Ken Goode lock eyes, there’s an immediate attraction. Sparks fly as they bond over cocktails, sharing their common experiences of being orphans and losing loved ones to suicide. Two biotech execs, whose company is developing a groundbreaking sexual enhancement drug, turn up dead and the forensic evidence doesn’t add up. As they work their own angles, sometimes together and sometimes at odds, their growing attraction threatens to cost them their jobs—and their lives. A sexy thriller about an investigative reporter and a homicide detective teaming up to look into the deaths of biotech execs who were working on an experimental sexual enhancement drug? They bond over their "shared experience of being orphans?" Their 'this is a bad idea' attraction to one another threatens their jobs and their lives in that order? I literally send the Amazon page for this book to Jayne  and Brooke - Spring has sprung!  immediately and told them I had found my next read. I was looking forward to writing all about this terrifically trashy story about how these two horny protagonists get themselves into trouble investigating a Viagra-related murder.Alas, none of that came to pass. Because this author, for reasons that will forever remain a mystery, chose not to lean into any of that and instead wrote a completely bland, predictable, cocktease of a no-actual-thrills-included thriller.  First, I guess we should start with pros and cons (pretty much all cons) of the book. It sucked. I saw one review refer to Katrina (the investigative reporter protagonist) as yet another TSTL (too stupid to live) journalist and that pretty much sums her character up. She runs around sticking her nose into things and then resorts to "damsel in distress syndrome" where *gasp* who could have known that asking invasive questions of a highly sus, powerful person would provoke a response. Aw shucks! I sure hope Goode, the big strong macho surf cop shows up to save the day and protect her! And Goode wasn't much better. He had previously been written up for a having an inappropriate relationship with someone on one of his cases and... shocking, he starts to fall for the doe-eyed reporter who's nosing around his new case. I wonder if he'll have learned his lesson from the last time this happened and he almost lost his job? NARRATOR: He did not. The book felt like the author was deliberately avoiding doing any kind of real research about her characters. The number of times Katrina glosses over standard journalistic procedures and the narrative vaguely alludes to her doing "journalism stuff" is rivaled only by the number of times Goode glosses over standard police procedures and the narrative vaguely alludes to him doing "cop stuff." It's like the author didn't do any real research about either of these jobs, and then went out of her way to write around that fact and thought none of us would notice that a book about two professionals doing their respective jobs doesn't actually include any accurate details about either of those jobs. Second, we need to talk about what this book wasn't. It wasn't a tongue-in-cheek, sexy little ridiculous thriller. I could have gotten on board with all of the above, if the book were like, "Hey, we get it. You're not here for characters and stories. You're here to see two sexy people do sexy things while they investigate sexy crimes. I mean, they're investigating a new drug that turns people into sex maniacs. Don't take this too seriously, wink wink nudge nudge." But the sexy times were nowhere to be found, and the author seemed to take this criminal investigation narrative very seriously. "This plot about biotech execs developing the HornyMaker Drug(TM) is no joke! Follow the clues! Don't laugh! It's not ridiculous! It's a serious narrative about corporate greed and the dangers of an under-regulated pharmaceutical industry!" Sure, Jan. The drug was largely an unrealized subplot. The relationship between Katrina and Goode had one romantic/erotic scene between them, three hundred pages into the book. It was a book that contained more "will they won't they" romantic intrigue than any sort of narrative intrigue. You know how sometimes you'll forgive a book for being poorly written because it includes stuff you like (sexy stuff in the case of romance readers, pew pew spaceships for science fiction, dragons and magic for fantasy, etc.)? Where you go, "Okay that wasn't very good but at least it was fun."? Well, this author leaned into the "not very good" but also forgot to include the "fun" parts. I'm going to post excerpts from two of the most scathing reviews that I read for this book, because they were both accurate. "This is nothing but a hodgepodge of words thrown together and placed into chapters. I was BORED." "In the acknowledgments the author goes to great lengths explaining how she wrote and rewrote the story over the course of 17 years because of the negative feedback she was receiving. Her mother described it as full of “dead words on a page” leading to yet another rewrite. The last version, the one finally published, her mother’s words still ring true to me. The coming out of this book was not a christening, it was a funeral." There were lots of reviews that joked the title of the book "Hooked" was an unfortunate oversell. This is apparently the first in a series, with the second book available for pre-order before it releases in June of this year. I don't plan on continuing in the series, and I truly don't think many others are either. Ultimately, I think it falls victim to the trap of being too ridiculous and poorly developed to be taken seriously by readers, but the author is - unfortunately - determined to take it very seriously, and the end result is a B-movie concept and execution that could have been an entertaining-as-hell B-level genre book if the author weren't so convinced she were writing an Edgar Award-worthy mystery. Now that you've read a 1,000 word review, allow me to TL;DR it for you in the form of a single GIF: | ||
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Created Mar 15, 2026 at 7:28pm •
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