HOOKED

Thea Galehouse, adrift and under-motivated, is a junior at Manhattan’s Stuyvesant High School when she meets senior Will Weston and makes him the center of her world.

Halfway through senior year, she gets pregnant, to the dismay of her divorced parents and Will, now a Columbia freshman. Walking away from the abortion her mother arranged and rejecting adoptive placement, Thea resolves to raise her child with Will. At first reluctantly supportive, Will feels increasingly overwhelmed, although the couple’s affluent parents smooth their path. Thea begins to crochet bikinis, to explore and develop talents of her own, as she weathers the challenges of unplanned motherhood and gains insight into her own professionally high-functioning, but otherwise clueless parents. If Thea’s voice, wry and detached, sometimes belies her actions (her instant passion for Will and irrational choices), it’s always smart and appealing. Greenman knows her world inside out, but it’s a narrow one: Here, access to first-rate medical care is a given—including safe, legal abortion—and teen parents can rely on generous housing and financial safety nets from their own parents.