#I'm not sure how to tag this to both avoid stans from being upset and keep people from defending it in my askbox

[separatist-apologist]

i see so much praise for haunting adeline in the dark romance space, but honestly i couldn't make it past a grown 6ft+ man hiding in a woman's wardrobe so idk if it was good or not.

If you like this book, I need you to look away because oh my god how I have been WAITING for someone to ask me about it. I wasn't going to bring it up, and I'm not going to talk about it by myself, but I WILL if someone ELSE asks me to.

First of all, HA and it's sequel are QAnon fanfiction. That should be enough to give people pause but it's not CLEARLY because everyone goes on and on about how good this book is. So lets set aside the blatant, in your face unavoidable anti-semitism for just a moment to discuss all my other problems with it (And do not come here and tell me the author changed the evil bad guys name, like congrats you made your coding a little more subtle).

First of all: the writing is so atrocious that even for trash, I question how people are reading it. And my only conclusion is that people HAVE to be skimming it, which explains how so much of the plot escapes people and they miss the aforementioned problems. Like quality-wise, the book is horrible and I don't think an editor with time could really fix it.

Secondly: I genuinely feel like a lot of dark romance authors forget that dark romance still requires ROMANCE to be part of their novels. A dark haired serial killer breaking into your house and saying, "no I want you so you're mine" is actually not romance. Do people know this? I feel insane sometimes looking at "dark romance" recs because there is 0 romance to it. There is no falling in love, there is no kindness, no emotional building, just an endless stream of crimes committed against the FMC until she agrees she likes being treated badly and sex becomes the stand in for emotional intimacy

Which of course takes me to point three: the smut is SO BAD I literally LOSE IT when people are like, oh the smut is SO GOOD LMAO STOP IT. Stop it right now, I skipped ahead once I realized I was never going to get there organically and like. I feel like I might get accused of being a prude, my issue isn't what's happening, it is HOW IT IS WRITTEN. The scenes are so dry, so uninspired, trying to be shocking for the sake of shock value rather than creating something that would be interesting and sexy. Words actually matter when you're writing, do some of the authors know that?

Anyway I loathe these books more than any other fast fiction KU book. I think I could come up with more positive things to say about Zodiac Academy than I can with the Haunting Adeline series. I am it's #1 hater