"hook the reader" is a correct and usable phrase in written English.
You can use it when you are wanting to grab the attention of the reader and draw them into the beginning of your writing. For example: "It's a wet and windy afternoon, and I'm stuck inside. But enough of this depressing news, let's instead hook the reader with something more exciting!".
Prologues are usually gimmicks to hook the reader.
The idea? Hook the reader, and show "what murdered the boy I was".
And he or his publisher seem to hope that such an opening might hook the reader and justify the silly, hype-inducing embargo of this book.
Mr. Irving uses coincidences, cliffhanger chapter endings and other 19th-century novelistic devices to hook the reader, while at the same time orchestrating them to underscore the improbable, random nature of real life.
I think that answering this will give you a necessary boost in confidence, making it so that you won't feel the need to constantly interrupt the narrative to ask, "Oh, am I boring you?" You'll be able to hook the reader without relying on promises like, "If you buy Volume II, I'll tell you where I hid the money".
At last, Stuart pressed his biographer to scrap a pedantic first draft and start over, this time telling the tale "backwards". The idea? Hook the reader, and show "what murdered the boy I was". Masters, the English-educated journalist son of the American writers Joan Brady and Dexter Masters, wisely took this editorial advice.
She sought to "hook the readers emotionally and make them care.
He knows how to hook the readers and reel them in.
Make sure to hook the readers and start off the action relatively quickly so that the readers aren't putting down the book before finishing the first page.
One of the best ways to hook the readers is to start in the middle of the immediate danger like, for instance, escaping from a burning house or an otherwise exciting situation like a duel.
It is also what hooks the reader's attention throughout.
