Hooked

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Liz Fichera’s young adult novel Hooked is the first sports romance that I have read that centers around golf. And while I am not going out straight away to buy a golf club, I enjoyed the sports parts hugely. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said about all other aspects of the novel.

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Fredricka (Fred) Oday is Native American and lives on a reservation. She attends a nearby high school in a white part of town, but has very little interaction with her white classmates. This changes dramatically when Coach Lannons asks her – as the only girl, and the only Indian – to join the school’s varsity golf team. Because her father works at the golf course, Fred has trained a lot there over the years, playing golf is her passion, and she’s very good at it. The problem is that she is extremely shy, and one of the other players – a wealthy white boy – has to leave the team to make place for her.

Ryan Berenger is a rich white teenager, and he’s moody, spoiled, and really bad-tempered when he hears that his best buddy Seth has been kicked off the school’s golf team in favor of a girl. He’s not prepared to give Fred the benefit of the doubt, and only warms up to her after they have spent some time together at the golf course on a Saturday. But any chance of a friendship between them is threatened by the open hostility of Seth and of Ryan’s girlfriend.

Here is what I liked a lot about the book: The descriptions of the golf course and of playing golf were marvelously vivid. As I said, I don’t play golf, but with this novel I understood the fascination and some basic rules in the bargain.

Even better is the way that the author creates atmosphere. Be it a full restaurant or the desert at night, Liz Fichera has the knack to make you see and feel these places. Her descriptions are not only detailed, they reflect the characters’ moods and draw the reader into their world.

But this cannot hide the weakness of the book, and that lies in characterization and stereotypes. Fred and Ryan are actually okay – she is too much of a goody-two-shoes for my taste, but still very likeable on the whole. He starts off as a real brat, but that’s what many teens are like, so why not? And with both, the author shows the deep insecurities of that age, which is okay in theory (that’s how teenagers are) but still made me wish to shake some sense into them occasionally.

All characters apart from Fred and Ryan are deplorably flat. All the Native Americans are excellent people, while all the white teenagers (with the exception of Ryan’s sister, the next heroine in the series) are nasty, self-centered brats. The problems in the grown-up world that cause suffering for both Fred and Ryan disappear with the wink of a wand. I was especially annoyed with the treatment of Ryan’s girlfriend and his best male friend: While she’s a bitch just because it pleases her, he gets the terrible family background that partly excuses his despicable behavior. I really dislike the latent misogyny of that setup.

Even though I was really drawn into the world of Hooked and read the book in one sitting, I can only give it a qualified recommendation due to the problems described above. Still, the author is very talented, and I will be on the lookout for others of her books – but possibly not in the young adult subgenre.

Reviewed by Rike Horstmann

Grade: C+

Book Type: Young Adult

Sensuality: Kisses

Review Date: 25/04/13

Publication Date: 2013/02

Review Tags: Sports Romance

Recent Comments …

  1. excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.

High school teacher. Soccer fan (Werder Bremen, yeah!). Knitter and book-binder. Devotee of mathematical puzzles. German.

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