My Rant Review of Haunting Adeline

A detailed review of the dark romance novel Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton. Spoiler alert, I hated it.

A Few Things to Keep in Mind:

• This video contains spoilers, opinions and shit talking. I do not like this book, I had several problems with it both structurally and spiritually. DO NOT TAKE MY OPINIONS PERSONALLY. It isn't personal, this book was just god awful and we can be grown ups and just agree to disagree. If you can't do that, just don't watch it.

• I detailed the trigger warnings at 00:08:10 but be warned, this book contains dark themes including but not limited to rape, sexual assault, romanticizing rape/SA, stalking, harassment, pedophilia, sex trafficking and gratuitous violence surrounding all these things just to name a few.

• There was quite a bit of antisemitism woven into this story, Carlton has apologized to the Jewish community and removed/edited out those things but the copy of this book I read and reviewed was one of the earlier editions THEREFORE it still included the antisemitic themes and actions. If you are Jewish and don't feel like dealing with this bullshit today, best to skip it. No hard feelings.

A few months ago, TikTok nudged me blindly down a dark road. A road lined with qanon fanfic, romanticization of rape/sexual assault, bad writing and pussy weeping. A road I thought I would die on.

A few months ago, I started reading Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton.

Clearly, I had a lot to say - the video ended up being close to 3 hours long - but I will sum it up for you.

I found no enjoyment in reading this. Every page turned felt like I was moving backwards somehow. The writing was cringey, trying way too hard and poorly executed which only added to the overall intolerability. The plot somehow managed to have so much going on while consistently giving us nothing. It felt entirely underdeveloped because clearly, all the author's energy went into extensively detailing all of our MMC's encounters with the pedophile rings as a way of redeeming him as he proceeds to stalk and rape our FMC into submission for over 500 pages. Naturally, that wouldn't leave a lot of energy and time to devote to, oh, I don't know, character development, cohesive story telling, editing? There were no ghosts, a side quest that added absolutely nothing to the story and could've been removed entirely without affecting the story in any way and a bunch of romanticizing abuse.

I would recommend this book to anyone who prefers their MMC's slathered in qanon vigilante porn with a side of rape romanticization and their FMC's coated in a thick layer of try hard, edgy girl energy turned up to an 11.

I would recommend this book to people who have 0 triggers and don't need to critically engage with their books to have a good time.

I would recommend this book to my dog Scooter, who died in 2007, because nothing can hurt him anymore.