Hooked by Catherine Greenman (ARC)

TITLE: Hooked

AUTHOR: Catherine Greenman

PUBLISHER: Delacorte Press

PAGES: 288

MY RATING: 2/5

BACK COVER BLURB: Seventeen-year-old 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, New York City, attending the 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 he goes out of his way to keep her involved in his life. But then Thea discovers that she's pregnant. And that starts Thea and Will on a wild ride that neither of them is prepared for.

After they decide to keep the baby, their disappointed parents contribute what they can to keep Will in school and give both teenagers a safe place to raise their child. When Ian is born, Thea and Will couldn't be happier. But a freak accident leaves Thea shaken and threatens to tear apart their little family, and she must turn to the last person she would have chosen to be her source of 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.

OVERALL IMPRESSION: I had really high hopes for this book and I was pretty disappointed. I really like reading stories about teenage pregnancy and I was hoping this would be a great read, but it fell flat. I found Thea and Will's first date extremely weird. Neither seemed the least bit nervous and they were both blatantly asking and answering personal questions like it was completely normal. It seemed to me like their relationship just kind of fell together instead of developing. I was confused for a lot of the book. To me it felt like it jumped around too much and was hard to me to follow sometimes. It also seemed like the book moved really slow. It took forever for Thea to get pregnant, and I was very impatient waiting for it to happen. The back cover summary made it completely obvious that Thea was going to get pregnant, and I felt like the book was dragging along because I already knew it was going happen and I was just waiting for it.

CHARACTERS: I didn't really get attached to any of the characters in the book. I just felt like once the story was over, I didn't really care about any of them. I couldn't stand Thea's parents at all. I understand how they would be upset with their daughter for getting pregnant, but they were just downright mean to her, even before she got pregnant. They were awful and supportive of her.

COVER: I like the cover of this one. Right off the bat it lets you know this will be a book about someone's pregnancy, and I really like it when book covers tie into the book.

*I received a copy of this book from Amazon Vine.