Innocence Of A Hood Virgin: A Novel

Tori Saunders never had the luxury of innocence. Born into Brooklyn’s most ruthless projects, where bullets don’t have names and dreams are casualties of the struggle, she learned that survival wasn’t a given—it was a battle. Nights of hunger. Days of silence. Pain that settled deep in her bones before she even knew what peace felt like.

Her father? Locked away, his absence another wound the world expected her to bear. Her mother? Lost to the streets without a trace. And the grandmother who took her in? She did what she could, but love in that house was scarce, stretched too thin between the weight of disappointment and the bitterness of regret.

So when love finally found Tori—raw, reckless, and wrapped in the promises of her first boyfriend—she thought she had found her escape. A way out of the hood. A way into something real. But fairy tales don’t survive where she’s from, and when that dream crumbled, she was left with nothing but a baby on the way and a reality that hit harder than any fist ever could.

Across the city, Los "Carlos" carved his own way out of the trenches. A former hustler turned businessman, he traded street wars for boardrooms, fast money for something real. But even with success, he was still haunted—by ghosts of the past, by the emptiness of meaningless situationships, but the nagging truth that everything he built still left him hollow. Love wasn’t in his plans. A family? Even less so.

Then he met Tori.

She wasn’t what he wanted—but maybe she was exactly what he needed. A girl with nothing left to lose but a fire in her spirit that refused to burn out. She wasn’t looking for a savior, and he wasn’t trying to be one, but somehow, they found themselves pulled into each other’s orbit.

But the streets don’t let go that easy. Their pasts won’t stay buried. And just when they start to deepen their bond the world reminds them that everything that glitters isn’t gold.
Betrayals. Enemies. Secrets that refuse to die.

Trust is fragile. Loyalty is dangerous. And in a place where love is often the first thing to be sacrificed, they’ll have to decide—do they fight for each other, or become just another story lost to the hood?

If you're a fan of African American romance, hood love, and gripping stories of resilience, Innocence Of A Hood Virgin by Theresa Reese will hold your heart hostage and never let it go.