I get my love of books from my dad. Our house was always filled with books. Even at 89, Dad is still an avid reader. He reads fiction and nonfiction, mostly crime, politics and historical subjects. At the moment he’s reading Jane Harper’s Last One Out.
We both loved Harper’s blockbuster first novel, The Dry, but haven’t really enjoyed the following books. I mean, they’re probably 7/10. By contrast, The Dry was 11/10, so it’s a high bar.
There’s been a bit of controversy surrounding this latest book. Harper has been accused of whitewashing the Australian bush. Writing about the Aussie outback is a very narrow line to walk for a white author. The desire to write about it is valid, but obviously white authors can’t write from an Indigenous perspective. I haven’t read the book yet, but yes, Harper’s characters have been predominantly white as far as I remember. So are mine.
I mostly set my books in the UK and France because that’s my heritage, or in places I love to visit, like Bali.
I’m of the opinion that reading stories written by Indigenous authors is the way to fix this issue. We can all benefit from reading a more diverse range of stories. This year I’ve read Melaleuca, the highly acclaimed 2025 Australian debut crime novel by Angie Faye Martin, and have Stan Grant’s Murriyang Song of Time on my TBR.
Not a great effort on my behalf, I know. I need to read more widely.
Dad’s main feedback on Last One Out is that it has him hooked. He can’t put it down even though he said it’s a bit of a slog to read (That’s Australian for he’s not enjoying the read.) Dad says he needs to know what happened to the ‘missing person’ and he very much wants to know if the main characters are together at the end.
That kind of talk is catnip to an author!
The rejections I have received this year on my contemporary romance said they didn’t think it was ‘hooky’ enough for today’s reader, and it wasn’t until my dad told me about his experience with Harper’s book that I really got it. You know that feeling when you feel you know something and then it really sinks in. The hook isn’t just the cool thing that happens in the story; it’s the threads of story that make the book unputdownable.
It’s not enough to write what we deem to be the hook in a query letter; it has to actually grab the reader and not let go. Readers want to care about the characters and their outcomes. This might not mean we like the characters, but it does mean we’re invested somehow in their journey and what happens to them.
Thinking of some of the books I’ve read this year…
In The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, I was desperate to know if Andrea got her comeuppance!
In The Housemaid I needed to know if Milly would get out of the house alive.
Madeline Miller’s Circe had me soooo deeply invested in this story. I knew enough of the mythology around Circe, daughter of the Titan, Helios, but Miller writes in such a way that I just couldn’t put the book down. But then I was sad when it came to the end of the story. I missed the characters!
By weird coincidence, my husband was also reading a book with themes from Greek mythology and particularly Helios. One day I was walking past a statue (just between Picadilly Circus and Leicester Square in London on the corner of ) and I read the inscription. I have walked past The Horse of Helios so many times, every time I’ve been in London since 1993, and taken photos of it. It was installed in 1992, so I saw it first when it was a year old. I always found it interesting, the way these horses are tucked away there. Never once have I stopped to read the inscription before.
So while my husband and I were both reading books featuring Helios, I finally realised the significance of this sculpture. The retelling was fantastic but the hook in Circe was the amazing writing of Madeline Miller, to be honest. She made sympathetic a character who had always been portrayed as a vile witch.
While in London, I bought You Are Here by David Nicholls, and I started caring for a whole new cast of hopeless cases that needed love! The hook was the wonderful will they/won’t they question of most contemporary romances, but it was so well done that even though I was still asking the question until the last moments, I wasn’t annoyed by it. Nicholls expertly avoided the cliches that normally annoy me so much.
So now I need to ask myself how to make my stories more hooky. How do I grab a reader and make them NEED to know not just how it all ends (because I’ve been known to jump to the last chapter…) but how it unfolds along the way.
How do I ask a reader to not only buy the book but to fall in love with it and carry a piece of it forever in their hearts as so many authors have done for me?
That’s a big question. The sixty-four thousand dollar question.
Want to read Alia Henry and the Ghost Writer? I’m posting a chapter each week to read free on Substack. Follow the link below to find chapter 1 or click here.
