- Narrator: Teddy Hamilton handles the dual timeline and the gothic atmosphere with skill, bringing real menace to the stalker's perspective without making it cartoonish.
- Subjects: Dark obsession and consent, gothic atmosphere, family trauma across generations
- Tone: Tense, unsettling, and deliberately provocative
- Bottom line: A dark romance that commits fully to its own disturbing premise, with high craft and high heat, but trigger warnings are essential reading before you start.
What happens when a novel decides to take its most uncomfortable premise completely seriously rather than softening it into something palatable? H. D. Carlton's Haunting Adeline, book one of the Cat and Mouse Duet, is the answer to that question, and it is not a comfortable one. The audiobook, narrated by Teddy Hamilton across 16 hours and 45 minutes, became an NYT bestseller, a USA Today bestseller, and an Amazon top-five bestseller simultaneously, which means the book's particular appeal found a very large audience very quickly. That success is worth understanding rather than dismissing, because Haunting Adeline is doing something with darkness that readers are responding to at scale.
Adeline Reilly inherits her late grandmother's gothic mansion, Parson's Manor, in Seattle. What should be a fresh start becomes something stranger when she discovers she has a stalker and then, more disturbing still, that her great-grandmother's journals document an almost identical pursuit a generation earlier. The historical echo, the suggestion that certain patterns repeat across family lines regardless of whether the women involved have any power to stop them, is the novel's most unsettling formal device. Carlton uses that echo structurally, not just atmospherically, building a parallel between past and present that gives the book more weight than most dark romance achieves.
Carlton's novel operates in a subgenre of dark romance that requires a very specific understanding of what the reader is signing up for. The stalker-romance trope is not new, but Carlton deploys it with more structural sophistication than the genre often receives credit for. The dual timeline, the gothic setting, the generational echo between Adeline and her great-grandmother's situation, these are not merely atmospheric decoration. They function as the book's way of asking whether the patterns it depicts are a feature or a flaw of the world it creates. That question does not resolve cleanly, which is part of why the book generates such strong reactions on both sides.
Teddy Hamilton's narration is one of the audiobook's genuine strengths. He navigates the material without either sensationalizing the darkness or pulling back from it into safety. The menace is real in his performance, and so is the compulsive readability that reviewers keep describing. One reviewer noted they went against their policy of avoiding incomplete duets and had no regrets. Another was unsure how to feel about enjoying the book as much as they did. That ambivalence, pleasure mixed with uncertainty about the pleasure, is a legitimate response to what Carlton is doing here, and Hamilton earns it through a performance that refuses to make things easy.
Hamilton Voices Two Timelines Without Blurring Them
The audiobook spans 16 hours and 45 minutes, which is long enough to fully immerse in the gothic atmosphere Carlton builds around Parson's Manor and the Seattle setting. Hamilton's voice sustains the tension across that length without losing grip. The novel's pacing is deliberate in the first half, building dread through roses appearing and threatening messages that feel more like promises, before the tension becomes unavoidable. This is a book that rewards patience in the early chapters specifically because Carlton is constructing something rather than simply delivering stimulation. The payoff in the second half requires the foundation built in the first.
The great-grandmother's journals, which Adeline discovers while living in the mansion, provide a second narrative thread that gives the book more formal complexity than most dark romance achieves. The historical and contemporary storylines develop in parallel, and the question of whether Adeline's story will end differently from her ancestor's drives the novel's forward momentum throughout. Hamilton handles the shifts between these timelines with clarity, maintaining distinct registers for the historical and contemporary voices so that listeners can track the dual structure across the full runtime.
Read the Content Warnings Before This Cliffhanger
Carlton's own note directs listeners to her website for a full list of content warnings, and that direction should be taken seriously. This audiobook contains material that will be genuinely disturbing for some listeners, and the author is transparent about this. Reading the CW list before starting is not an optional courtesy: it is necessary information for deciding whether this particular dark romance is for you. The book ends on a cliffhanger, making Hunting Adeline the necessary follow-up, and Carlton also recommends listening to the novella Satan's Affair first for full context on the Cat and Mouse universe.
The heat level is high and explicit. Listeners who want dark romance with lighter content should look elsewhere. What Carlton offers is intensity without apology, which is precisely what the book's devoted readership is seeking. Knowing in advance that this is a duet with a cliffhanger ending is also practical information: plan to have Hunting Adeline available before you reach the final chapters.
Open-Eyed Dark Romance Readers Will Appreciate This
This audiobook is for readers who approach dark romance with open eyes and a genuine tolerance for morally complex, deliberately uncomfortable material. It is not appropriate for listeners who are sensitive to non-consent, stalking, or graphic violence. For those who enjoy the dark romance subgenre and have read the content warnings, the craft here is among the better work in the category: the gothic atmosphere is well-sustained, the generational structure adds depth, and Hamilton's narration is a strong match for the material. Starting with Satan's Affair before this audiobook will provide the recommended entry point into the C&M Universe and add context to the dynamics between characters that the novel itself takes as somewhat established.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does the Haunting Adeline audiobook include content warnings, and where can I find them?
Carlton directs listeners to her website for a full content warning list. The book contains material that may be triggering for some readers, and checking that list before purchasing the audiobook is strongly recommended.
Is Haunting Adeline a standalone audiobook or do I need to listen to other books first?
Carlton recommends listening to the novella Satan's Affair first for full context on the Cat and Mouse universe. Haunting Adeline is book one of the duet and ends on a cliffhanger, so Hunting Adeline follows directly.
What makes the Haunting Adeline audiobook different from other dark romance titles?
The generational echo structure, with Adeline discovering her great-grandmother's journals documenting an almost identical pursuit, gives the book more formal complexity than most dark romance. Carlton commits to the disturbing logic of its premise throughout rather than softening it.
