“Haunting Adeline” and “Hunting Adeline” by H. D. Carlton make up the Cat and Mouse duet, which readers rave about online. People on TikTok constantly recommend the dark romance duology because of their love of the book.
“Haunting Adeline” is the first book in the series. It follows Adeline (Addie) Reilly and Zade (Z) Meadows. Addie is a young author who recently moved into the mansion she was gifted in her grandmother’s will.
Z is the boss of his own company named after him, Z, where Zade and his companions work as vigilantes to dismantle the world of human trafficking. However, his life gets turned upside down when he becomes obsessed with Adeline at first sight.
This series explores extremely dark themes and is not for the faint of heart. It explores themes such as stalking, abuse, graphic depictions of violence, human trafficking and more. It can be a shock when opening the first book to see a list of trigger warnings.
Many of the trigger topics were described in great detail in the book, which made it incredibly difficult to read in certain parts because of the horrific things that were happening to the characters.
Another aspect of note with this series is the writing style, which is not exceptional by any means. For the first part of “Haunting Adeline,” it was surprising and a little annoying how many swear words were used. Many of them felt entirely unnecessary to have in the book. It made the writing feel sloppy and unrefined.
Additionally, both books include weird parallels in the story. For example, in “Haunting Adeline,” Adeline finds a diary in a wall of her mansion that belonged to her late great grandmother, which by itself is not weird. However, in the diary, it describes Adeline’s great grandmother falling in love with her stalker.
Considering Adeline also falls in love with her stalker, this parallel just felt weird. In the grand scheme of things, it kind of makes sense for the story. Adeline works to prove the stalker was her great grandmother’s murderer to rationalize hating her own stalker. This is in spite of her true feelings.
However, the parallel grows weirder when, in “Hunting Adeline,” Adeline is put into a gut-wrenching situation where she finds another diary of a person going through a similar experience. Having the diary in the first one sort of made sense but having another one relating to Adeline’s current experiences felt a little too unrealistic.
All of these things do not pull away from the addictive story. The constant high stakes of both books, but primarily “Hunting Adeline,” make it easy to keep reading. It also makes the characters feel more realistic because of how they react and solve the issues they are forced to face.
The duology isn’t an awful series overall — it has its’ appeals, but it definitely is overhyped on the internet because many things in it could have been done better.
