Book Reviews

Book Review: Haunting Adeline by H. D. Carlton

A creepy stalker, Stockholm Syndrome, and a lot of cringy “love” scenes, Haunting Adeline is not for the weak or the seasoned, intellectual reader. Especially if you don’t like dirty talk (and not even good dirty talk at that). Read on below for my review of Haunting Adeline.

Book Information

Adeline is a successful writer and is moving back to her late grandmother’s gothic mansion. There, she finds out secrets about her own great grandmother. Not only that, but she realizes she has a stalker. One who is not willing to give up until Adeline calls herself his through whatever means it takes. 

Review | Heidi Dischler

Can someone please erase this book from my mind? I mean, seriously, what did I just read? I would have marked it as DNF (“did not finish” for my non-book nerds out there) at like 10% through the book had I not been determined to write a review on my blog. Everyone was talking about this book. I thought, you know, that it would blow my mind. Well, it kind of made me want to vomit to be completely honest because of how cheesy and absolutely cringeworthy it was. 

The writing was horrible in my opinion and so repetitive at times. For example, I get that Adeline was thinking about her great grandmother’s murder, but then seconds later she’ll say, “Well, I was thinking about my great grandmother’s murder.” It made me want to cry. I’m assuming that everyone raves about this book because of the steamy scenes, but good Lord they made me have secondhand embarrassment. I skipped through a lot of them if I’m being honest…. 

I don’t think I’ll be able to talk about this anymore without spoilers, so this review is literally all spoilers. 

SPOILERS AHEAD. 

Let’s start with this: it was completely unrealistic and everything was convenient. First, the main male character, Addie’s stalker, Zade, runs his own company to stop sex traffickers and rapists. But get this, he stalks Adeline and RAPES HER. His whole entire character is a contradiction. Like, dude, stop acting all high and mighty because you stop traffickers and rapists when legit all you fantasize about is being one. Hated everything about his character. Don’t even get me started on Adeline because she legit was just like “let me tease this guy who is stalking me and could probably kill me”. Like, no. I can’t imagine any sane person doing that. 

More on how unrealistic this book is. Where the hell does Zade get the money to run this company? Is he just a billionaire and it’s never mentioned? Like I’m pretty sure with all the high tech gear and crazy stunts they pull that it cannot be cheap. Makes no sense to me. Secondly, they legitimately solve Genevieve’s murder using blood DNA testing. I’m not an expert in DNA testing or anything… but you have to have something to run the sequence against. I’m pretty sure DNA testing wasn’t around when Genevieve was alive in the 40s. What that means is they would have had to have a certifiable DNA sample that was hers that didn’t degrade. Yeah. Totally not realistic. 

Overall, I am EXTREMELY disappointed in the book community for raving about this book. It really wasn’t for me, but it seems like it’s either you love it or you hate it. You guys know where I stand. I have no desire to read the second one or even find out what happens to the characters. That’s how disconnected I felt during the whole book…. Please let me find a good book next to erase the bitter taste this one left in my mouth. 

Source: Audiobook from Audible.