Book Review: Haunting and Hunting Adeline
Trigger warning: These books mention abuse, human trafficking, sexual assault, gore, violence and trauma.
I’m doing a two-in-one here, because I want to get these done and out of the way. These books need Jesus. An exorcism, because good lord there are a lot of dark and rather messed up things to unravel here. And again, I blame BookTok. I was intrigued by how much people were raving about these books. RAVING. Well, it turns out these books were banned by Amazon because of their contents. And we’ll see why.
Let’s start with Book 1: Haunting Adeline.
I can’t help thinking that after the second book, it's really tame. Because, yeah – falling in love with your mysterious hacker stalker is something we all do on a daily basis. But then again – one of the most popular tropes in fiction is the bad boy: Lydia runs off with Wickham, and Sandy changes her entire personality of Danny; effectively what it has now evolved into is “morally grey men”. I think Haunting Adeline might just have the most morally grey man I’ve ever come across. His name is Zade – he is… Intense. He falls for our Leading lady, Adeline, at first sight, and, being a hacker, is determined to know everything about her. He finds out where she lives and watches her through the windows, promising himself – determined- that one day she will be his. His saving grace is that he hunts down paedophiles and human trafficking rings, so he is a good guy-ish. It is a little unnerving that Adreline falls for Zade, even more so by the fact that we all end up liking Zade. Quite a feat I must say and he will stop at nothing - And I mean that literally – to make sure Adeline is safe and falls in love with him. It also has some pretty damn good spicy scenes. If a little unhinged at times.
Book 2: Hunting Adeline.
Oooofff. This book comes with some quite serious trigger warnings. So please proceed with caution. There are a few nasty sexual assault scenes and themes of human trafficking which, essentially, is the totality of part 1. I’ve never sped read quite as fast as I did part one – it helped that I skipped the assault scenes. I wanted to preserve my mental health. Part two I took my time, Zade had found Adeline after a nearly two-month search for her and now it is all about Adeline rebuilding who she is and trying to heal from the trauma. She is a fighter, she grows in strength whilst trying to heal and facing all the unimaginable things that were done to her.
If I were to take anything that is positive from this book, it would be that the author does a very good job highlighting the devastation of human trafficking. You cannot look away from it. As much as we all like to think that it doesn’t affect us, or that because we can’t see it, it doesn’t apply to us. Millions of men, women and children are trafficked every day for inhumane exploitation. It is humanity at its worst and it needs to end. Adeline had Zade who hunted for her and knew he would get her out alive. Not everyone who is trafficked has a Zade, and quite possibly that is the point.
However, please proceed with caution. You, dear readers, will find the next couple of (hundred?) books I read and review to be light-hearted and happy to discount the sorrow within the pages of Haunting and Hunting Adeline.