The Hook Up by Kristen Callihan Published by Plain Jane Books on September 7, 2015
Genres: Contemporary, Romance, Sports
Pages: 352
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
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The rules: no kissing on the mouth, no staying the night, no telling anyone, and above all… No falling in love
Anna Jones just wants to finish college and figure out her life. Falling for star quarterback Drew Baylor is certainly not on her to do list. Confident and charming, he lives in the limelight and is way too gorgeous for his own good. If only she could ignore his heated stares and stop thinking about doing hot and dirty things with him. Easy, right?
Too bad he’s committed to making her break every rule…
Football has been good to Drew. It’s given him recognition, two National Championships, and the Heisman. But what he really craves is sexy yet prickly Anna Jones. Her cutting humor and blatant disregard for his fame turns him on like nothing else. But there’s one problem: she's shut him down. Completely.
That is until a chance encounter leads to the hottest sex of their lives, along with the possibility of something great. Unfortunately, Anna wants it to remain a hook up. Now it’s up to Drew to tempt her with more: more sex, more satisfaction, more time with him. Until she’s truly hooked. It's a good thing Drew knows all about winning.
All’s fair in love and football…Game on
Oh, man. This book is so good. I’ve read it before; I decided to reread it and the followup before reading the new one. I was happy to re-read it because I remember liking this one, but I forgot how much I genuinely loved this book. I don’t read a lot of NA, and when this one came out and started getting a lot of buzz, I didn’t read it. Mainly, I think, because I knew it was NA, and I didn’t really like the original cover. I figured “Right. Football star and campus nobody get together. No kissing, one wants forever, the other doesn’t. The end.” We’ve all read that book. By the dozen.
But this was not that book. Drew Baylor and Anna Jones are so much more than that couple. I didn’t like Anna very much in the beginning. Well, that’s not completely true. I didn’t dislike her so much as want to shake her. She had so many deep-seated insecurities and she let them completely take over her life. She wasn’t very popular in high school – she was the chubby loner girl with crazy curly red hair who no one wanted to be friends with. So she can’t fathom why Drew Baylor, the all-around campus heart-throb, Heisman-trophy-winning star quarterback on their national championship winning football team, the one guy on campus who everyone wants to be with, women to have sex with, men to just be in his orbit, would want her, plain, boring Anna Jones.
You’re the sun around which people orbit. If you had been in my [high] school…you never would have seen me hiding in the shadows.
She fights so hard in the beginning to convince everyone, Drew, her friends, herself, that this is just a hookup, that she doesn’t care about Drew beyond that. I became frustrated with her, though. I understand how she felt. In high school, I was Anna Jones. And I get that at 21, 22, it’s difficult to ignore what it seems like everyone around you is saying. And, frankly, their friends, both Anna’s and Drew’s, were assholes. Anna’s friends told her she was right to be insecure about Drew, and Drew’s friends told him Anna was bad for his football career. But at some point, don’t you have to look at the evidence that’s in front of you and react to that? Drew never did anything to make Anna think he was lying to her. Yes, he was approached by women. Constantly. Most of whom at best ignored Anna completely, and at worst, physically pushed past her to get to Drew. And usually Anna held her own with these women, pushing her way back to Drew’s side, or speaking up and making it clear that he was there with her. But at the same time, she was still so insecure and determined to leave Drew before he could leave her. She was so internally hard on herself and Drew, it was hard to read sometimes.
And Drew. Oh, Drew. I loved everything about Drew. I loved his Twitter hashtag (#battlebaylor), I loved the battleaxe tattoo, I loved the ease with which he seemed to move through life, and most of all, I loved the ease with which he just decided he wanted Anna and he was going to have her. Not that their relationship was easy; Anna made sure it wasn’t. And Drew’s own history was pretty grim. But he just refused to accept no for an answer from anyone. He won’t let professors take it easy on his grades, he won’t let the darkness in his past inform his present or future, and he certainly won’t let Anna Jones ruin what he knows could be great.
Love, when it came for me, did not creep. No, it walked up to me, bold as you please, you know, just in case I wasn’t paying attention. It did, however, slap me upside my head.
Anna and Drew have a lot to get through and over, both together and individually. From their very first meeting, though, it is so obvious that these two are on a crash course. I don’t want to give too many of the details of this book away. It’s so worth picking it up and discovering everything these two do to each other and with each other and go through together. There’s so much more to this story than I was expecting. Do yourself a favor and read it.
