Haunting Adeline by H.D. Carlton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
The Manipulator
I can manipulate the emotions of anyone who lets me.
I will make you hurt, make you cry, make you laugh and sigh.
But my words don’t affect him. Especially not when I plead for him to leave.
He’s always there, watching and waiting.
And I can never look away.
Not when I want him to come closer.The Shadow
I didn’t mean to fall in love.
But now that I have, I can’t stay away.
I’m mesmerized by her smile, by her eyes, and the way she moves.
The way she undresses…
I’ll keep watching and waiting. Until I can make her mine.
And once she is, I’ll never let her go.
Not even when she begs me to.Haunting Adeline
Stalkerific!
The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙🖤💚❤️
Heat/Steam: 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Story/Plot: 📕📗📙📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌍🌎
Character development: 😔🤓😘😄🥰
Narration: 🎙🎙🎙🎙🎙
Narration Type: Duet Narration
The heroine: Adeline – she knows she has a stalker and is afraid, but also intrigued. He comes to her house every night and she sees him from her window. She inherited Parsons Manor, her victorian house from her grandparents and her grandmother thinks it is haunted by the ghosts of workers who died in a fire while building the house. She sometimes hears footsteps at night, and it might be the ghosts, but it could be the man that watches her. Adeline is a successful writer.
The Hero: Zade (a.k.a. The Shadow, a.k.a. Z) – he is a hacker and an enforcer. He is trying to take down a human trafficking ring in Seattle. He has no problem torturing and killing the evil people he susses out using his hacking skills, in order to get information on the ring. When he sees Adeline at a book signing, he immediately is enchanted with her and soon becomes obsessed.
The Story: It was immediately apparent that Zade liked torturing and murdering the vile men he caught with his hacking skills. I wish it would have been explained earlier in the story why he does what he does and how he got into it. It was eventually told that he had created a network of hackers and mercenaries who sought out human traffickers and gets rid of them. He now has people in just about every state working for his organization. Zade is wealthy and it is eventually explained where he gets his money.
The story has a bunch of flashbacks to 1945 from the diary of Genevieve Parsons (Adeline’s great grandmother Gigi) about a man who stood outside of Parsons Manor watching her when her husband was away. Adeline eventually found out from her mother that Gigi was murdered in her bedroom and the murderer was never caught. Adeline thought it was probably the stalker that killed her. I didn’t really like those chapters at first but grew to want to hear more about what happened back then.
The story overall, held my interest and I liked Zade from reading Satan’s Affair. That story was very weird, and I knew from reading it, that Zade could be a bit scary and psycho, but I did like that book, and I liked Zade and thought he would be a good Hero. As his organization is explained, I have to admit that I did like him more. He certainly didn’t torture or kill anyone that didn’t deserve it. Though he was confusing since he was so passionate about human trafficking and doing right by all the women and children, but meanwhile he was stalking and scaring Adeline, like a common criminal.
One thing I dislike is when two main characters get intimate in either public places or during times when their minds should be elsewhere, like in the middle of a dangerous situation. In this book, Zade traps Adeline in the house of mirrors while they are at the Satan’s Affair Halloween fair. I mean there are a bunch of kids at that place, and I was surprised that nobody came up behind them. Though later we find out that the park closed while they were in the house of mirrors. So that was pretty weird.
This audiobook was done in dual points of view via duet narration and was narrated by Teddy Hamilton and Michelle Sparks. Teddy Hamilton is one of my favorite male narrators and always does a great job. He has a deep, sexy voice which I just love and makes a great audiobook boyfriend. Michelle Sparks has a soft feminine voice which is very pleasant, and she also did a terrific job.
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