Hooked by Liz Fichera

This is the US cover as I hate the UK cover!

About the book

Hooked is the debut novel in the UK by Liz Fichera. It was published by Harlequin Teen on 29^th January and the book is 368 pages long.

Synopsis (Taken from Goodreads.com)

Get hooked on a girl named Fred...

When Native American Fredericka ‘Fred’ Oday is invited to become the only girl on the school’s golf team, she can’t say no. This is an opportunity to shine, win a scholarship and go to university, something no one in her family has done.

But Fred’s presence on the team isn’t exactly welcome — especially not to rich golden boy Ryan Berenger, whose best friend was kicked off the team to make a spot for Fred.

But there’s no denying that things are happening between the girl with the killer swing and the boy with the killer smile...

What I thought

I hadn’t heard much about this book before requesting it on NetGalley although it sounded very different in comparison to what I normally read, basically due to the main character. Fred is Native American which is something you see very little of in Young Adult books. The only other example I can think of is The Twilight Saga. I really like reading about people from different backgrounds, which made Fred a really interesting character for me. I loved learning about her life on the Reservation and the other people there.

However, Fred living on the Reservation and not having the luxuries that other teenagers had, made her seem poorer than she actually was. Before going to high school, I doubt Fred was really bothered about any of these luxuries and they were made out to be more important than maybe they actually were. This setting made the plot somewhat lacking and not exciting. Love stories between the rich and poor have been done many times before and I feel as though Fred’s ethnicity could have been used in a better way.

Even though I didn’t like the fact that wealth was used, I did like how different Fred was in comparison to Ryan, the love interest. Ryan is popular, loud and outgoing while Fred is extremely shy and generally keeps herself to herself. The difference in personalities made it possible for both Fred and Ryan to learn something from each other, to learn how to be different for good reasons. They were both a good influence on each other for very different reasons.

What is really different about this book is that it is about golf. Now, for a young adult novel, I have definitely not seen this done before and although I think golf is probably the most boring sport ever invented; I liked how it was used in the plot. Fred is the first girl ever to make the team at school and the boys are not happy about it. Not only does she get stick because she’s a girl and they don’t think she’s good enough but they also use her ethnicity against her. While Liz Fichera didn’t exactly make golf interesting, she did at least make it a bit more interesting for me which I never thought would happen.

Although some parts of Hooked were interesting and different, some were very samey. I definitely didn’t dislike this book but I didn’t love it either. I think it could have been so much better had the author tried to push some more boundaries.