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This was my first H.D. Carlton book. Also, my first panic attack was induced by fiction. One second, I was comfortably reading in bed, the next I was internally screaming, “What the hell am I reading?!”—followed almost immediately by, “I need more.”My first H.D. Carlton book. My first panic attack. My first “What the hell am I reading?” moment — immediately followed by “I need more.”
Haunting Adeline is that kind of book. The one that barges in, breaks your peace in half, challenges your boundaries, and then whispers: “Relax. It’s just fiction… or is it?” It’s the first part of the Cat and Mouse Duet, and while the title sounds like Tom & Jerry after three glasses of wine, trust me — this is everything you secretly want (but would never admit) in a dark romance.
And when I say dark, I don’t mean candlelight and brooding poetry-reading men. I mean a descent into emotional, sexual, and moral chaos. This is a love story entangled with sex trafficking, sexual abuse in nearly all its ugly forms, cruelty, and the dehumanization that grows from power and moral decay. It’s a ruthless x-ray of a rotten world, wrapped in an obsessive, morally gray romance.
This book is part gothic mystery, part disturbing thriller, part ghost story, and a giant middle finger to the sanitized idea of romance.
In a world where innocence, beauty, and vulnerability have financial value and become market goods, we meet Adeline Riley and Zade Meadows.
The story
Adeline Riley is a writer. She moves into what can only be described as a “Haunted Pinterest Mansion” inherited from her enigmatic grandmother. The house comes with an unsolved death, a semi-depressed ghost, and a library you’d sell your soul to live in.
Zade Meadows – aparent om de afaceri. În realitate, hacker vigilante, genul ăla de bărbat care n-are Facebook, dar știe tot ce ai postat în 2012. Îi vede poza pe un afiș, intră în librărie, o privește dintr-un colț și decide că trebuie să o cunoască. Și prin cunoaște, înțelege să-i instaleze spyware în laptop și camere în casă. Romantic, nu?
And just like that, you’re in the middle of a hot, toxic, deeply questionable situationship between a woman who thinks she’s in control and a man who knows he is.Adeline is the manipulator through her writing. Zade is the stalker — in real life. Between them unfolds a dangerous erotic game of cat and mouse, where consent flirts a little too close with the red line.
Adeline calls herself a manipulator because her books take readers into wild emotional landscapes. Zade is the silent predator, dangerous but bound by a twisted moral code. He watches her. He protects her. He consumes her. And instead of running, Adeline… invites the fire.
Consent? It’s there… kind of. Mostly. Maybe. Depends on your definition.
She finds out he’s watching her? Yep. Is she scared? Theoretically. But in practice? She gets drunk with her bestie and begs him to “touch her.” Out of fear, obviously.
Seriously, girl — MOVE OUT. But no, Adeline stays. Because deep down? She loves being hunted.
I could retell the plot, but with the insane amount of hype this book has had on every platform imaginable, summarizing the story feels redundant. Instead, I’ll give you a brutally honest review, unfiltered and driven by personal reaction.
When fantasy crashes into reality
This isn’t just a love story. It’s a cold shower thrown over a world that sells innocence as a commodity. H.D. Carlton uses Adeline and Zade’s relationship to throw us headfirst into a disturbing reality, where human trafficking is business and cruelty is currency.
And yet, some readers reduce the book to “Zade is toxic” and “Adeline has Stockholm Syndrome.”
Really? I read the same book. You know what I saw?
A woman turned on by being watched. A woman who doesn’t just tolerate fear — she provokes it. She doesn’t run. She puts on heels and shares her location.
Yes, it’s shocking. But guess what? Some women have fantasies. Some women want fear, dominance, pain… in a safe, controlled space. And that’s valid. Just because it doesn’t fit your vanilla mold doesn’t mean it deserves to be burned at the stake.
Adeline/Zade is a literary (and passive) exploration of a dark sexual fantasy. What does it mean to crave fear mixed with desire? Adeline gets off on being hunted. On the thrill of possibly being caught. She’s always been into the tall, dark, dangerous type — but no one has ever read her like Zade does. He’s obsessed, yes. He wants to force her to learn to love him. And yet, he never endangers her. From the shadows, he ensures her safety, shielding her from the poison he knows all too well.
The stories in the background of the book, have a lot to say. On one hand we have the mystery murder of Gigi. Solving the mystery offers little to nothing to the plot. I did not care much about the love story between Gigi and her semi-mafia lover, nor about the ghosts that were roaming freely throughout Parsons Manor. But Zade’s underground mission to dismantle trafficking rings? That’s where the book punches you in the gut. He sees the world’s ugliest face and takes action. He becomes a dark savior, rescuing victims from the monsters wearing suits and titles. So why is everyone pearl-clutching over his obsession with Adeline while ignoring the actual horror behind the story?
What I loved
Everything.
This book challenged me. It made me explore my mental sexual boundaries, ask uncomfortable questions, and give myself brutally honest answers. It was a passive experience of a vivid fantasy, written with talent and intensity.
The House of Mirrors scene deserves to be framed. That symbolism? Chills. The way Zade sees all of Adeline’s layers — every cracked reflection of who she is — wrecked me.
The writing flows. It’s lyrical, visceral, and painful. Sure, some dialogue feels like it was ripped from a Netflix action flick… but who cares? The atmosphere devours you.
Zade is magnetic.
Obsessive, yet empathetic.
Violent, yet transparent.
Dangerous, yet deeply protective.
” The only way I’ll be able to truly keep her is if she sees me at my worst. I would rather just off myself than trick Addie into loving me as a good man, just to break both of our hearts when she realizes I’m not a good man at all. “
” When you make someone fall in love with the darkest parts of you, there’s nothing you can do that will scare them away. They will be yours forever because they already love all the fucked up bits and pieces of you “
What I didn’t love
The gun scene. Didn’t need it.
Zade with a rose between his teeth? Please. What is this — Zorro cosplay?
Adeline. Ugh. She’s complex, yes, but exhausting. What she thinks, says, and does are three separate movies. She gets everything she wants from Zade and still plays dumb. I spent half the book yelling, “Just grow the hell up!”
” No one in their right mind likes being scared. But I do. I love it. Which is why having a stalker is the worst thing for someone like me. I’m susceptible to enjoying the fear a bit too much. My love for horror is going to get me killed one day. It’s like I was meant to be hunted. “
” It doesn’t matter how many times I see him, he always pulls the same reaction out of me. Fear. And excitement. “
My rating: 5 stars
For the atmosphere. For the intensity. For the audacity. For making me feel guilty about liking it — and loving it anyway.
It’s not a “heavy” book in a literary sense. It’s heavy in a mental sense. It forces you to feel, not just read. It makes you face your shadow self. And even when it goes too far, when it gets messy, theatrical, or cliche, its message is sharp: dark stories deserve love, too.
But this book makes no sense without its sequel, Hunting Adeline. If Haunting is the sin, Hunting is the punishment.
But that’s a story for another time.
Read this with courage. With an open mind. And the awareness that, sometimes, our darkest fantasies lure us in because we know we’ll never live them out.
