Reviews tagging 'Antisemitism'

Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton

18 reviews

christinabrunette's review against another edition

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medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This author isn’t like other girls she parallel thinks herself into writing wanton conspiracy theories as plot points 🤪

Even if you out the blood libal, antisemitism, rape, lack of consent, and clear dog whistles aside…It’s just not well written! But also like why the fuck would you put any of that aside??!?! The characters lack true depth, make choices that go counter to their backstory and development (which them gets written off as some primal instinct they unlock in each other, and the pacing and plot felt unplanned and like things were shoehorned in or dropped into the plot to suit random whims. 

Listen I’m all here for everyone having their smutty good time and not into yucking other people’s yum but there has to be a line y’all. And this just ain’t it. I even read the whole thing just to give it a fair shake it’s just soooo bad. 

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lolalastname's review against another edition

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dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.25

WRITING A FULL REVIEW LATER
To paraphrase Tyra Banks “It’s so bad I want to give you a zero. But that’s not possible, so I give you a 0.25.”

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mickeygod's review against another edition

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The writing is redundant and at times overly flowery. The main characters are nearly flawless except for their glaring personality flaws; but being fabulously weathly, good looking, and good at sex are supposed to detract from that enough to get through the logical fallacies of especially the crazy stalker’s arguement.
He is supposed to be redeemable in as much that he is killing pedos and human traffickers and working against the skin trade, while participating in and actively committing assault and rape on the FMC?
No thanks. I don’t get booktoks obsession with this. It’s just not good, and edgy for the sake of being edgy. If I had bothered to finish it, It’d be one star. 

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serenareadsx's review against another edition

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dark tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

1.0

This one was simply not for me. My advice is always read it yourself and see if you like it. Just check that you are comfortable with the trigger warnings. ⚠️ 

To put it bluntly, this literally romanticises sexual assault and justifies rape just because the attacker is attractive. I have seen countless reviews and TikTok’s talking about how Zade is the best fictional man ever… I am so confused. I even tried to like him, but I couldn’t bring myself to. Yes, he improves during the course of the book. Yes, he also apparently improves in the second book (which I won’t be reading and I’m annoyed at myself for buying both books before reading the first lol). But that does not change the fact that this man is a rapist. Don’t even get me started on how hypocritical that is considering his line of work 🤦🏻‍♀️

This book is incredibly dark, but the only issue I had with it was the justification of sexual assault. I also want to make clear that it is not that I’m uncomfortable with reading about non/dub con, it is only uncomfortable for me when it is from a character that we are meant to love and fall for. No, thank you. If he was ugly, I doubt people would be so obsessed with him. 

It is a shame and I feel disappointed because I thought the rest of the plot was great. Plus, Carlton’s writing style was addictive, fast-paced and set the scene well.

I’ve seen a lot of reviews describing this as a love/hate book. Sadly, I’m in the hate category for this one 😔

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kamm123's review against another edition

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challenging dark emotional mysterious sad tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0


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mcup89's review against another edition

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dark emotional mysterious tense fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? N/A
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

I just finished Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton…..

Ummmm……welll…… the SMUT is real in this one. 

I’m not sure if I can handle the amount of spice in this book. It definitely needs to come with trigger warnings. 

It’s weird because the storyline is actually really really good, but the sex is just strange. I feel like I could have done with out that lol 

The love the guy has for the main character is kind of beautiful but then you are quickly reminded that the dude is a real creep! 

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 4/5 
🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️



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karebear921's review against another edition

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dark mysterious tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Character
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

0.5


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danni_0412's review against another edition

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This book has so many issues… 

First of all the characters are very one dimensional. I didn’t care about Adeline, Zade, Daya etc. They had good one liners, but that doesn’t make for good character development. With Zade in particular, you can see this phenomenon. Essentially, he’s supposed to be a non-self aware good guy. But really, it felt like I was reading from two different characters. 

Even with the trigger warnings, I found the flagrant abuse a bit much. Also this author tends to write tropes that promote negative representation to those with mental illnesses (seen in both this book and the novella Satan’s Affair.) 

The book is also very bloated. This book did not need to be over 500 pages. I found myself skimming most of the filler and not even missing a beat. The book needed an editor badly. 

In conjunction with the books being bloated, the prose is insanely boring. I felt no emotion from this book other than disgust at Zade. The smut couldn’t even keep me interested because I disliked the writing style and the characters so much. It was dry like the Sahara.

Normally, I tend to soft dnf books because it’s just not the write time. However, I am hard dnfing this book. I literally do not care about what happens next nor am I emotionally taken with this book. It was really just bleh. 



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