Haunting Adeline

Ok, so I just finished listening to both Haunting Adeline (Book #1) and Hunting Adeline (Book #2 of the Cat and Mouse series) by H.D. Carlton. The narrators were Teddy Hamilton (one of my favourite male character voices!) and Michelle Sparks. Both narrators were fantastic and helped me to feel more in the book (which maybe wasn’t such a good idea).  I don’t mind a dark romance read every so often and was so curious to see what all the hype was about Haunting Adeline. Let me tell you, the trigger warnings – there should be more! I would say this is more like a dark-horror romance (think old haunted Victorian houses, creepy horror fairs, stalkers that literally cut a guy's balls off because he touched the girl, he was obsessed with… you get the idea…). If you don’t like hearing about people being cut up, then skip this series. There is a ton of blood and guts in both books which, doesn’t bother me – a good horror book always is exciting to read in my opinion. (Thank you, Stephen King!). But we aren’t talking about horrors… we’re talking about dark-horror romance - and that is something that I don’t think is for me. 

I can’t say that I would listen to these books again because it just wasn’t my thing. Saying that though, I couldn’t stop listening. The amount of love and dedication that Zade and Adeline share is pretty deep and admirable. How they got there though, I struggled with that. I would say the first book (Haunting Adeline) was better than the second book (Hunting Adeline) only because I felt that there was too much insight into the sex trade industry. I ended up skipping chapters from Adeline’s perspective of the sex trade industry. It was too much for me. I couldn’t listen to how girls are tortured, raped, and sold. Luckily, the second book didn’t go into detail about any girl younger than the age of 16 being tortured or raped, but it’s clearly implied that girls as young as 5 are tortured and/or raped. Personally, it all made my stomach a little queasy. Unfortunately, all of these things do actually happen in the real world and if you can get by listening/reading about the experience of it all, then I feel the love story between Zade and Adeline is worth experiencing – as long as you’re into dark romance (think Stockholm Syndrome). 

After this heavy and dark read, I’m going back to my hockey rom com favs where consent is always favoured!

What are your thoughts? Please comment below – we’d love to hear what you think!

 ~ JEN