I feel like Vue would be a better fit for this role, especially since now they have a Composition API that's as pleasant to use as React, except that they do lifecycle hooks better than React (no messing about with dependency arrays): https://vuejs.org/guide/extras/composition-api-faq.html
There's also Pinia which is a lot simpler than trying to use Redux, it's closer to MobX: https://pinia.vuejs.org/
There are also plenty of component libraries, like PrimeVue: https://primevue.org/
Seriously, the only actual complaint I have about Vue is that the 2 to 3 migration wasn't all that pleasant (albeit not as painful as what Python dealt with hah).
Oh and for more complex use cases (like what Next provides), there is Nuxt: https://nuxt.com/
Next is so much more refined compared to that.
Vue also takes a lot of inspiration from compiler first frameworks and will be implementing an optional API to bring those optimizations to core in a coming point release.
I agree with you that hooks are a great feature that many React devs would probably enjoy using.
The only downside to Vue atm is the lacking comprehensive community support for libraries like `react-aria` and `framermotion`. I think the community is working on ports, but we all know that sometimes ports make compromises that might miss the nuance of the primary library author thinking about those problems directly in relation to the target client.