A review by ataleofcoffee
Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton

Did not finish book. Stopped at 81%.

I got tired of the main characters. 

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Content Warnings

Graphic: Sexual assault, Sexual content, Sexual violence, Trafficking, Stalking, and Sexual harassment

Going in I knew this was a *Dark Romance* and I thought Why not? I've had some luck with Dark Romances that were highly recommended, maybe this one will be fun This was not the case. The Romantic leads are Adeline and Zade. One is an Author, the other is an antigovernment computer hacker out to stop human traffickers. Both suck. Both are edgy and frustrating to read thier POV', as chapters alternate between them. Our Female lead opened with a whole bit about sexually charged 'oh no I'm being stalked, does he think I look hot?' and never improved from there. I thought the cool factor of her moving into a creepy family manor home would be a good time, but mostly it felt like a "Not like other girls" set piece. Her female best friend, Daya. also feels like a set piece. Like the sassy best friend kind who give Addie an excuse to explain her self-given nickname and chapter POV reference of 'The manipulator'. Why does she reference herself as that?

Because she writes books, therefore she's manipulating her readers. And she does it in public because she has social anxiety but still functions.

It sounds juvenile, and not in a mid-twenty something kind of way. Zade suffers a similar fate of being insufferable. It's the toxic "My girl", and noncon to dubcon with the pretense of being an edgy badboy who does good stuff by killing pedophiles and human traffickers. Also he's got scars and Heterochromia.

And he rapes her with a gun. Because its an edgy "reclamation of what's his" after she brought some other dude home with her.

There's a secondary murder plot about Adie's Great-Grandma and her own journal entries about her sordid love affair with her own stalker interspersed throughout the narrative. It's the more interesting part, and it's the B plot. It's also not the best mystery and it's not really exciting. All in all, for having heavy and dark subject matter it handles it all in a juvenile way, with a weak plot, weak writing style, weak characters, and just feels like an excuse for spice. And I put it down after a workday and do not feel like trying to finish it.

I was told it ended on a cliffhanger by a friend and I'm not hanging on to get to a more disappointing conclusion.

Also what was the point of Sibby?? She came out of nowhere and did nothing but cheapen the already questionable plot.