Same experience for my team a couple years back. We hated the idea of changing everything to hooks, then we actually started using them and fell in love. So much complexity fell out of our code we couldn't justify sticking with class components.
Having said that, there are some gotchas with hooks that aren't trivial and can make them difficult to use/understand without significant comments. But hey, what code doesn't fit that description?
So we sat down and actually used hooks for a few days - refactored small and large components to be sure we understood them and saw the difference in the code. We found it to be a perspective change -- once we made that change and got used to the new syntax, we loved it. Our code was simpler and easier to maintain. Once we really learned when to use useEffect so as to not abuse it for everything under the sun... the code got better still.
So while you are correct that blindly embracing hooks would be harmful... Blindly rejecting them is equally harmful.