Haunting Adeline

I couldn't find this book at either of my libraries, probably for very obvious reasons, but I don't read book bios. I read this book bc my friend read it, loved it, and I love trying new books.

TLDR; I hate this book but I'm not into that. Poor writing and characters, sexually disturbing. Gave me the ick. This book wants to be “You” and “Fifty Shades of Grey.”

0/5 stars, not for me. We don't kink shame, but the writing, dialogue, character development, and storyline felt so juvenile, corny, poorly developed, awful. I love a good romance book and will stand by poor writing if the storyline is worth it, but this one was so bad I couldn't see beyond the low quality.

I can understand why people would read this book and enjoy it, but if you aren't into that kind of content, I'd just avoid it altogether. But I learned some new vocab like non-con and dub-con, HAHAHa not for me. I'll go back to my lighthearted romances.

The beginning was so intense and visually disturbing, I thought it would get worse, but it didn't, bc she fell in love with her stalker/person that SAs her constantly. The sexual violence is... disturbing, but it captivated me to the point I wanted to know how the book ends. So here we are, I finished the book and absolutely hated every second of it.

The paranormal aspect felt like an afterthought. The gun scene was bizarre/gross/icky.

This book felt all over the place and Z was such a mess of a character. Constantly mansplaining his mission of saving the children, being one of the best hackers... It felt like the author is a big fan of conspiracy theories, doesn't understand actual Satanism, shares oversimplified stereotypes of Satanic blood rituals to spook you, (I can't tell you how many times I rolled my eyes).

It feels like they watched the movie, “Sound of Freedom,” and thought, “I like a big strong man that's into cyber security and goes on missions to save children from sex trafficking, let me spin this into a romance book with hardcore scenes.”