Quick Summary:
The Hookup Plan by Farrah Rochon is the third and final book in the Boyfriend Project series. This is the story of London Kelley, successful pediatric surgeon with a following at Travis County Hospital in Austin. London’s known for being vocal about issues that affect her coworkers, and most importantly her patients and she’s not afraid to show it – even if it means butting heads with leadership at the hospital.
Despite her very demanding job, London takes the lead in organizing her high school class reunion given that she was class president once upon a time. While at the reunion, she runs into her nemesis: Drew Sullivan. Drew, now a multimillionaire hedge fund manager, was London’s academic equal back during their high school days. London and Drew both ended up as co-valedictorians of their senior class – something that bothered London even as an adult. Her plan to avoid Drew backfired and they ended up doing a bit of catching up.
Plot Overview:
London and Drew catching up quickly heated up. After grabbing a few drinks after the reunion, London saw this as an opportunity. Given her very stressful and demanding job, she needed a way to decompress. What better way to decompress than with some good, meaningless sex? She and Drew end up hooking up, which London chalks it up as a “onetime” thing. Except it happens again in the span of 24 hours when she realizes she left her purse at his hotel suite.
Drew, now a former hedge fund manager, leads the auditing company called Trident Health Management Systems. His company was called in to help audit Travis County Hospital in hopes of fighting off efforts for privatization – a detail he managed to leave out before hooking up with London.
As you can imagine, she was pissed and declared that she couldn’t trust him due to him lying by omission. After trying to reason with her, they end up hooking up again, which is where London devises her hookup plan. The plan? Have great, meaningless sex while Drew’s in town with 0 strings attached. Both agreed except that Drew had a string attached long before they even hooked up. What London didn’t know was that Drew had a major crush on her in high school, and still did several years later. To not risk losing her, he agreed with her plan in hopes that it could develop into something more.
Common Themes + Opinions:
London’s ambition sticks out in this story, especially since it’s the reason behind her hate boner for Drew. A straight A student with a 4.0 GPA, who later went onto medical school and made a name for herself as a first year resident at Travis County, it’s no surprise that she is who she is. However, further into the story, we learn the reasoning behind London’s push for academic success and why she hated Drew.
Her goal had always been to impress her father and make him proud of her, something she never got to hear or experience during her childhood. She thought that if she can get good grades, he’d be proud of her and show it. Except he didn’t show it and she would instead find out he’d brag to his friends about her from others. She was desperate for his approval, something she later realized she’d never get, and projected her feelings regarding her father onto Drew. I can relate to London here in wanting to make her dad proud, but unfortunately, like she learns, it’s not something everyone can get. And even in the grand scheme of things, it’s not something that matters anyway.
For Drew, he’s ridden with guilt around his mother’s death. She unfortunately died of cancer, and Drew blamed himself for not doing more while she was alive. Part of the reasoning he’s leading Trident in helping struggling hospitals in underserved communities is because he feels that had her neighborhood hospital had the right and updated equipment, they could have caught the cancer earlier and done more to help her.
Final Thoughts + Ratings:
Overall, I enjoyed reading The Hookup Plan. It’s another celebration of Black love, and Black success – what’s not to love? I did find the ending a bit abrupt and expected more of a fleshed out ending for London and Drew. I also found it hard to believe that she’d want to bed him so quickly after she claimed to still hate him after all that time. Like I get that she had the opportunity and took it, but it was a bit too quick for me.
Aside from that, I related to London’s relationship with her father and with her siblings, and was rooting for her when she had her showdown with her dad. Obviously as a big fan of love, I was also rooting for her and Drew. I thought the catastrophic event in this story would be someone finding out they were hooking up and therefore create a conflict of interest. It wasn’t, which was good because it wasn’t predicable and what actually happened didn’t drastically affect London and Drew’s relationship.
All things considered, I give The Hookup Plan four stars. As for the spice, it does get a lil hot a few times.
Have you read The Hookup Plan? Let me know your thoughts in the comments!
4/5
