Disturbing & Dark! Cat and Mouse Duet | Audiobook Review

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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.

Narrator: Teddy Hamilton & Michelle Sparks

SERIES: Cat and Mouse Duet, BOOK 1

LENGTH: 15 HRS AND 44 MINS

PUBLISHER: self-published

FIRST PUBLISHED: 2021, AUDIO PUBLISHED 8/29/22

This post contains affiliate links. This means I receive a small commission at no cost to you from any purchases you make through these links.

Heat Level: Scorching

Trigger Warning: Stalking, Murder (off-page), Sexual Assault (on-page, in detail), Child Trafficking, Child Abduction

Haunting Adeline is a very dark and disturbing romance where the male main character is a stalker. This is my first book by H.D. Carlton and I honestly didn’t know how to rate this book at all. This is going to be a spoilery review because it would be hard to review this book without spoiling the plot. Please double-check the trigger warnings for the Cat and Mouse Duet because there are quite a lot in this duet.

The premise of Haunting Adeline is intriguing. I got hooked on the story before I even finished the first chapter. The FMC, Adeline lives in an old Gothic mansion that she inherited from her grandmother, whom she was close to. This Gothic mansion is a character in itself, creepy and haunted. It is also alluded to in the book that her great-grandmother may be haunting the estate since she was murdered in this mansion. Adeline discovers a bunch of diaries written by her great-grandmother who was also stalked! There is a mystery here and Adeline and her friend Daia are investigating her death.

There is also another storyline here focusing on the stalker who we find out is Z and is the leader of a vigilante shadow organization that is targeting child and women sex traffickers. We even have a few scenes with Z while he is hunting them and rescuing the victims.

This book is very disturbing in that the MMC is the one stalking the FMC! To be honest, I don’t know how I feel about this because there is one scene where the MMC r*pes the MMC! This was shocking to me and I think it makes sense especially since Z claims to be an advocate for women and yet he is doing something so horrendous and unforgivable. I could justify the stalking, but not r*pe!

The plot was interesting enough that I was able to finish reading Haunting Adeline even though some of the scenes left a bad taste in my mouth.

Haunting Adeline is fast-paced despite the length of the book/audiobook. The last quarter of the book had me on the edge of my seat. There are two plot twists here that are ended on a cliffhanger. 

Hunting Adeline picks up after the end of the first book and it immediately reveals the true villain of the first book. I wasn’t very surprised when the villain was revealed since I had already narrowed it down to 2 possible suspects.

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The Diamond

Death walks alongside me,
But the reaper is no match for me.
I’m trapped in a world full of monsters dressed as men, and those who aren’t as they seem.
They won’t keep me forever.
I no longer recognize the person I’ve become,
And I’m fighting to find my way back to the beast who hunts me in the night.
They call me a diamond,
But they’ve only created an angel of death.

The Hunter

I was born a predator,
With ruthlessness ingrained in my bones.
When what’s mine is stolen from me in the night,
Like a diamond hidden within a fortress,
I find that I can no longer contain the beast.
Blood will paint the ground as I tear apart this world to find her.
And bring her back to where she belongs.
No one will escape my wrath,
Especially not those who have betrayed me.

Narrator: Teddy Hamilton & Michelle Sparks

SERIES: Cat and Mouse Duet, BOOK 2

LENGTH: 17 hrs and 24 mins

PUBLISHER: self-published

FIRST PUBLISHED: 2022, AUDIO PUBLISHED 10/12/22

This post contains affiliate links. This means I receive a small commission at no cost to you from any purchases you make through these links.

Heat Level: Scorching

Trigger Warning: Sexual Assault (on-page, in detail), abduction, Killing (on-page, in detail), torture (on-page, in detail)

Hunting Adeline picks up after the end of the first book and immediately reveals the true villain of the first book. I wasn’t very surprised when the villain was revealed since I had already narrowed it down to 2 possible suspects.

Hunting Adeline is darker and even more disturbing than the first book. I even had to skip a couple of scenes because they were so descriptive and extremely disturbing. Trigger warnings for r*pe, sexual, and physical abuse.

The first part of Hunting Adeline is set during the time of Adeline’s captivity and this is when all the disturbing things happen. While I think that this part is integral to the plot, this still doesn’t make the things that were described less disturbing. We also read about the things that Z does to get Adeline back. He is very ruthless in his ways and we meet a lot of interesting characters that help him along the way. There is a group here that I am very curious about and I hope they get a book.

The second part of the book focuses on Adeline’s healing and I think this was handled well. We don’t have the magical dick phenomenon here and this really made me enjoy the book more. How Adeline’s healing felt real even though there were a few things that were over-the-top.

Hunting Adeline is faster-paced than the first book and I felt like I flew through the book even though it was about a couple of hours longer than the previous book. There is another character that appears in both books that I am very interested in and I also wish she gets her own HEA.

OVERALL THOUGHTS

This duet deserves to be read consecutively, otherwise, you would just be pissed off because of Z’s actions. The second book does a very good job of redeeming Z because he really is a legitimate antihero and someone that actually r*ped the FMC.

This is probably one of the darkest books that I read and this will probably be the last one for a while since I really needed a palette cleanser right after reading this duet.

Ultimately, I decided on 3.5 as my overall rating for this duet because the very first book really dragged the whole series down for me.

Do you read dark romances?

What is your favorite dark romance?