A Truly Filthy Book
Haunting Adeline and why it won the internet
If you spend time in the book corners of TikTok and Instagram, you have noticed that a lot of the posts are about romance, specifically “dark romance.” If you’re unfamiliar with the term, dark romance is a subgenre of romance with LOTS of graphic sex, morally-gray characters, and behavior from the male character that would, in other genres, classify them as the villain: stalking, kidnapping, abuse, and non-consensual or dubious consent sex. A sign you’re about to read dark romance is that the blurb will say something like: “check the trigger warnings. Your mental health matters.”
Not to be critical, but many of these books are lacking in the elements that make a good book. Yes, they have red-hot scenes in them. Yes, the behavior of the characters is outrageous. And yes, they technically have a plot. But they’re not GOOD.
But one stood above the rest. Haunting Adeline was originally self-published and then was so wildly successful it got picked up by a publisher, wher…