Book Review: Why Haunting Adeline Is Not Dark Romance but Predator Propaganda

🌹

1. Introduction: The Hype vs. The Reality

Haunting Adeline has gained massive hype, especially among young women who glorify Zade as the ultimate “dark romance” hero. But as someone who studied literature, and as a survivor of different types of sexual abuse, I need to call this book what it is: a dangerous glorification of coercion, written with a hollow female lead and a predator male lead.

2. Flat Characters, Hollowed Prose

Zade is stale. There’s no development, no remorse, no conflict. He doesn’t evolve, he doesn’t bend, he doesn’t even wrestle with his contradictions. He stalks, he forces, he obsesses, and that’s the whole arc. His sense of entitlement over Adeline's body puts him right in line with the predators he fights. 

Adeline, meanwhile, is written as a blow-up doll with lines. A vending machine that's wet on demand.  Any time Zade thinks of her, her genitalia is always one of the first things he names, never her inner life. Contrasting with Sibby, and how he described her with haunted eyes, she was innocent, if not so terrifying. It gave her humanity.

Adeline is contrasted by being a wet p. and a bunch of great tits. God. That. Is. Hell. On. Earth. 

What kind of woman would want her legacy to be the 'heat pooling between her legs' and the one guy she banged at a concert? Where the hell is the soul? Where is the humanity? Where are the complexities of being a human being? 

I'm terrified of Zade, but I want him cause he's so hot.' < THAT IS NOT COMPLEXITY. That is shallow writing at best, a complete bafoonery at worst. This is laughable. This is an insult to the ink that splayed upon the pages. What have we as a nation come to where this piece of pornographic parody is a best-seller?

FYI: Body reactions ARE NOT CONSENT! Just cause you slept with someone before, again, DOES NOT MAKE IT CONSENSUAL.

She doesn’t grow, doesn’t reflect, doesn’t hold dignity. She is “always wet” in every scene, whether in a haunted house, at a concert, or staring at the ceiling during unwanted sex. There is no nuance, no depth, just a free-for-all, leading to endless degradation. She is like a mouse. A lab rat bumped up full of hormones, chasing an endless high.

3. The Dangerous Portrayal of Consent

The most toxic part of this book is its handling of consent. Again and again, Adeline says “no,” resists, or tries to escape, and her body is written as betraying her. She’s aroused anyway, so the narrative frames it as secretly consensual.

This is rape-culture logic: if you enjoyed it physically, it wasn’t really assault. For real survivors, this is not just offensive, it’s retraumatizing, and worse, it's gaslighting on a global scale.

4. The Cultural Fallout

Because Adeline is hollowed out, readers’ attention turns to Zade. And since the only character with agency is the predator, Zade is glorified. Women swoon, calling him “romantic” or “obsessive in a good way.” But here’s the danger:

• If men read this, they see predators celebrated.

• If actual predators read this, they see confirmation: “I knew women secretly wanted it.”
  This isn’t edgy. It’s propaganda that normalizes abuse.

6. Conclusion: Why This Book Matters

This is not about being prudish. This is about calling out dangerous writing that feeds both women’s fantasies and men’s excuses. If you want dark romance, read authors who explore complexity, trauma, shame, or fear with depth. But Haunting Adeline doesn’t do that. It cheapens everything.

It’s not romance. It’s not literature. It’s pornographic abuse repackaged for TikTok hype. And that should insult us all. This is a book that is desperate to look deep, like that one little spoiled rich girl who watched a YouTube video -one lonesome night- on conspiracy theories and then brags to her equally shallow friends at a pretentious little party on how she suddenly now knows how the world works. 

Anybody can pick up a pen and write, not everyone should.