Hooked: A Novel of Obsession

Author: Asako Yuzuki

Translator: Polly Barton

100% of affiliate revenue supports ash.reads.horror

A Paperback Original.
Named a Most Anticipated Book by The New York Times, The Guardian, Forbes, Oprah Daily, Lit Hub, and Publishers Weekly.

From the author of the international bestseller Butter comes a chilling and perceptive novel about obsession, female friendship, and the slow unraveling of two lives.

Eriko’s life looks perfect—from her prestigious job at a Japanese trading firm to her spotless apartment and devoted parents. Her newest project, to reintroduce the controversial Nile Perch into the Japanese market, is as ambitious as she is. But beneath her flawless surface lies a consuming loneliness. Eriko has never been able to hold on to a real friend.

Enter Shoko: a popular lifestyle blogger whose work Eriko follows obsessively. Shoko lives a life of controlled chaos—messy apartment, take-out dinners, a kind, easy-going husband. She writes about daily contentment, though her fractured relationship with her father gnaws at the edges of her happiness.

When Eriko orchestrates a “chance” meeting with Shoko, the two women strike up an unlikely connection. For a fleeting moment, Eriko believes she’s finally found what she’s always longed for. But as her fascination turns to fixation and Shoko’s carefully balanced life begins to dissolve, both women are pushed to breaking points neither of them saw coming.

Deftly translated by Polly Barton, Hooked is a taut, provocative novel about modern womanhood, the hunger for connection, and the quiet, ordinary ways our lives can spiral out of control. With razor-sharp insight and disarming empathy, Asako Yuzuki explores how far we’ll go to be seen and what happens when the ones who see us don’t like what they find.

What I’m Reading This Week

Currently Reading

Butter by Asako Yuzuki-- The cult Japanese bestseller about a female gourmet cook and serial killer, and the journalist intent on cracking her case, inspired by a true story.
There are two things that I simply cannot tolerate: feminists and margarine.
Gourmet cook Manako Kajii sits in the Tokyo Detention House convicted of the serial murders of lonely businessmen.

Dark Is Where The Devil Comes by Daisy Pearce-- The woods are known as the place to avoid. What goes in, doesn’t come out.