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3.44 AVERAGE
3.44 AVERAGE
Series Rating: TBD, but I’m emotionally compromised and dangerously horny
We Have:
✅ Dark Romance
✅ MFM (Yes. At. The. Same. Time.)
✅ Dubcon / noncon-adjacent (read the tags, y’all)
✅ Knife Play, Blood Play, Somnophilia
✅ Stalker Obsession
✅ Pierced Dicks (but WHY won’t they tell me how?)
✅ Dirty Talk That Could End Me
✅ Identity Plot Twist That Took My Breath and My Panties
✅ Dual POV (mostly her, but we get inside the monsters too)
✅ Plot. Real plot. Real fucked plot.
Let me just go ahead and say: I went in blind. I saw the hype. I followed the chaos. And now I’ve emerged on the other side a changed bitch. I need a therapist—not because of the trauma in the book, but because I am devastated that I don’t have my own Truth and Dare showing up to pipe sedatives into my vents and wake me up by eating me alive. I mean that literally. Check my highlights. I can’t even look at my bed the same anymore.
These men? Violent. Possessive. Deranged. And somehow also sweet in the most fucked-up, ride-or-die way that has me questioning every healthy relationship I’ve ever had. I was suspicious of everybody from page one, and when the truth dropped? I gasped. Full-on “oh shit—no fucking way!” levels of stunned. I knew something was off, but still. That reveal hit.
And then the memories? JFC. Eyebrows in my hairline, mouth open, staring like—“Nah. Naaaaahhhh. No fucking way.” That kind of shocked. I wasn’t emotionally broken. But I was invested.
Let’s talk smut. Was the smut smutty? Hell yes. Pierced MMCs, commanding, possessive, deliciously filthy… even if I wished we got more detail on those piercings
rating: ★ - this shit SUCKS. i'd give it 0 stars if i could
why i chose this book: thought the premise was kinda interesting- i love detective x killer romances so this seemed like a decent pick
things i liked:
• the smut was okay but nothing to really write home about
• aside from that: literally nothing! im so sorry this is so bad on every count that i cant even say anything nice about it, which i try to do with every book i review.
things i disliked:
• the ONLYYYY nickname the two mmcs have for alex (fmc) is "little darling", and when i tell you this gets repetitive and obnoxious fast, i mean FAST. why is her last name even darling. how common is that anyway
• there are so many throwaway side characters that it's hard to keep track of them, AND THEN YOU FUCKING FORGET WHO THEY ARE so when they come up next you're like i have never seen this man before in my whole life
• and then some of them were introduced for specific reasons and their plot thread just got left there! what the fuck!
• TERRIBLE, GODAWFUL DIALOGUE. seriously nobody human actually talks like this. this is like asking a robot what a human would say in a conversation and then putting in its answers verbatim. it's stiff, it's awkward, and yes, it DOES get repetitive like everything else in this book.
• alex has no personality!
• also, as an add-on to that last point: alex supposedly has an "unsettling affinity for murderers and their victims" but this is literally never shown anywhere. we're just supposed to take her word for it. i mean, she fucking fails at catching these guys at EVERY TURN how on god's green earth does she have a knack for this
• show dont tell violations are EVERYWHERE
• the plot is so goddamn repetitive. she wakes up. she showers. she goes to the drive-through and gets a fucking bagel and coffee and this happens SO MANY TIMES that i wanted to die. and then she goes to work and interviews people and whatever but it never EVER adds anything to the plot and on the forensic side everything is stupid and pointless. god i hate how the author clearly did not do any research for this book. idc how much she says she did, she Did Not do enough
• i do not know how
Spoiler
"tristan" translates to "truth"• YOU MEAN TO TELL ME THEY
Spoiler
GAVE THEIR TWIN DAUGHTERS NAMES STARTING WITH H AND S SO WE COULD HAVE ANOTHER FUCKASS GIMMICK ABOUT THEIR NAMES MEANING SOMETHING ELSE ("hide and seek" in this context)???• the whole thing is bullshit. such bullshit. i almost didn't finish it, and i hate not finishing books. but this shit was off the wall awful.
was it worth the money?: absolutely goddamn not. no. never again. spare yourselves the smut is NOT hot enough to warrant this kind of hatecrime on the brain.
The main character is flat with no personality. The absolute definition of a Mary Sue. Except that she has a "darkness" in her (seriously if I have to hear about the darkness one more time I'm going to lose it). Every man who interacts with her falls for her (I wish I was joking).
The men are absolutely fucked in the head - yes, I know it's dark romance and they're meant to be, but at least in other dark romance books they have redeeming qualities. They are also brothers, and I cannot get behind incest. They do what is legally classed as rape multiple times to the main character, but apparently it's ok because she enjoyed it? Also, they hide her birth control and she barely bats and eyelid and then feels EXCITED at the prospect of having their babies. WHAT THE FUCK.
Every chapter felt the same. The plot (and I use that term very loosely) was weak, and the investigation chapters all read exactly the same. I felt like the author could have done a lot more showing rather than just telling me in summary what happened. The entire backstory is not even remotely hinted at once and feels like it comes out of nowhere. The writing is poor and not cohesive.
In summary, I hated this book with a burning passion.
Hunt Me Darling is a dark stalker romance about an FBI agent tracking unalivers who also happen to be stalking her. We get our dark stalkers. We get our super spicy scenes. We even get a twist! Overall a good book. My only critique is the pace was slow throughout the first 3/4 of the book, so it was hard to stay on task.