I picked this book up from a bargain bin without giving it much thought. When I finally got around to reading it, I could barely put it down.

Laura Stepp interviewed young women and got them to open up about the current hook-up culture. In their own words these women describe how they view sex and love, and their confusion about how to build a good relationship. It seems that this generation is confusing sex with love. And hooking up with random partners without any interest in long term relationships seems to be the norm. While I'm all for female equality and sexual freedom, this approach of pursuing sex doesn't seem to be very fulfilling. On the contrary it sounds like these young women give permission to be used by men without getting anything in return. And as a feminist myself I find this highly appalling! There has to be a better way than this.
This book is definitely thought-provoking and should be assigned reading in high school and college. ( )

I could talk about how this book, written by a journalist and media professor, vastly overgeneralizes and exaggerates the experiences of the young women of this generation. I could talk about though she posits "love" as the desired opposite of hooking up, she falls into the same trap as her sorority-girl subjects and cannot satisfactorily define what "love" is. I could say that Stepp ignores both the very large minority of college students who are in serious relationships, and are happily intimate with a partner who cares about them. Writing about eight different girls who hook up cannot be the definitive account of "This Spoiled / Coddled / Over-scheduled Generation"...but really, the best testament to the fact that this book is rather poor is that there are only NINE librarything users who own it!!! Kathy Acker and obscure Henry James titles beat Unhooked by a MILE! ( )

A must read for any parent wondering what on earth "hooking up" really means for our children. It's a mind-blowing look at the culture of sex among youth today. The implications for society are huge. ( )