Reviews tagging 'Injury/Injury detail'

Hunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton

500 reviews

challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Definitely wouldn’t recommend to the faint of heart. This book hits on incredibly sensitive topics and may not be appropriate for everyone. I can imagine it being very triggering for some.

However, WHAT A READ 🤯 Had me on an emotional rollercoaster, crying at some spots and others routing for the characters to reek chaos on those who have wronged them one way or another.

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challenging dark tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

If you're looking for a dark romance, this isn't it, and please take the content warnings for this book seriously because I would say although this is a story about Zade and Addie, it is primarily a book about human trafficking, surviving sexual assualt, and coping with trauma. It is not a fun, spicy dark romance, even if the romance in it is "dark and spicy", with Carlton taking very great care to distinguish boundaries and consent in these scenes, which was very very necessary.
 
There are parts of this book that are really interesting regarding how Carlton wrote trauma, and although very triggering, it was in some ways cathartic to see messy, self-destructive portrayals of survival which we don't often see written about. Other parts are of course gratuitous which is sort of expected, but nonetheless difficult.

This book was one I felt uncomfortable reading from start to finish (which I think... you should feel uncomfortable reading like 65% of this book?), and I don't think I could ever in good faith recommend it, but I'm glad I read it, not for the plot or "spice" which again... read a different book for a fun spicy read..., but for a narrative of survival I didn't know I needed. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional sad tense fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark tense
Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Read the content warnings!! 

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dark emotional hopeful sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Yes
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
Plot or Character Driven: Plot
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Addie and Zade both got so annoying and over the top towards the end…. I never want to read dialogue like that again. Also the handling of the human trafficking/ abuse arc felt very strange and slightly pornographic for such a heavy subject matter, especially Addies response of escaping sexual abuse and going back to practicing rough and borderline non consensual sex with her nutjob boyfriend. (Epilogue scene- she has a nightmare about her r*pist…and then Zade r*pes her ?! Wtf) 
First book was fun but this just got ridiculous, so OTT it wasn’t even sexy anymore, just distasteful
Some fun action scenes

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Definitely the darkest Dark Romance I've read at time of reviewing, but for comparison with other popular books, I haven't (yet) read anything by Penelope Douglas, Brynne Weaver, or Harley LaRoux, though I have read the entire series of Demon Reform Academy, Gods of Legacy, and Possessing Her, which I found to share similar themes and tropes with Hunting Adeline. (If you thought Navessa Allen's Lights Out or Caught Up were dark, this is much darker.)


While dismemberment and torture, as well as 'touch her and die'/'anyone who talks to her dies' themes are very similar to scenes found throughout Demon Reform Academy, Hunting Adeline includes many scenes, mentions, and descriptions of sexual assault, physical assault and abuse from multiple persons to multiple characters including the FMC, within an ongoing plot of human trafficking and the obsessive MMC destroying everything separating him from her.
 


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adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Yes
Loveable characters: No
Diverse cast of characters: Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus: No

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
dark sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: Character
Strong character development: No
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Complicated

It's definitely not for the faint of heart. I didn't care for the MMP. The the MFP was okay. 

Expand filter menu Content Warnings
challenging dark emotional sad tense medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven: A mix
Strong character development: Complicated
Loveable characters: Complicated
Diverse cast of characters: No
Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

This one was better than the first. I can understand where it was trying to go with Adeline taking back her power and I know how taking back your power can look absolutelybat shit insane to people who have never experienced sexual trauma. I still think Zade went about it incorrectly. Especially in chapter 33 and the epilogue. Why tf would his first thought to her having a fucking nightmare about her rapist be "oh yeah lemme stick my dick in her right now while she's asleep and actively having a nightmare"? Be so fucking for real. And for an "extremely spicy" book, I honestly expected more anal lol.

Overall, the plot potential was absolutely there. It could have simply been gone about in a better way that didn't involve her being sexually assaulted by the man that supposedly loves her on multiple occasions. No, hime being "self-aware" doesn't earn him any points, it actually makes him worse because a lack of self control doesn't justify shit. I feel like the need to wrap so many tropes and kinks into a single character is what kept this book from being great.

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