THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR 5K (and 6, 7, 8 and 9K too!) You sure know how to make a gal feel special. I appreciate you all so much. ALSO - fair warning for all... I yell a lot in this so I recommend starting the volume out at a low/medium.
Good job! I'm getting back into reading, so it feels good to have a companion to listen to about books 😊! Your videos are awesome, of good quality and your personality really shines through them! Love the long format! 😊
Okay, so the bad people smell like rotten eggs and the good ones smell like flowers. Fine, I can live with that. I actually kind of like that concept tbh Zade doesn’t smell like rot, but he does smell like brimstone... Brimstone is another word for sulfur, which is notorious for smelling like, you guessed it, rotten eggs. Great job accidentally shooting yourself in the foot, author-
I'll defend your right to like what you like BUT I will also not be quiet about my dislike. A mutual disagreement with a foundation of respect. At least that's what I try to accomplish.
@@weirdobookclub I also feel like the key is you’re critiquing the execution of the themes and concept, not just yelling at people for having fetishes you don’t share. I honestly really appreciate that because I keep going into dark romance hoping for something that will be messy but still a fun ride and being infuriated by how they execute and handle the content, but when looking for cathartic rants just seeing lurid ‘bad fetish!’ clickbait instead of well-deserved excoriation for the details. You’re a breath of fresh air and always so fun and funny.
My daughter can not speak and it’s written in her medical notes as ‘non verbal’. Being able to speak but choosing not to, or not being able to in certain situations is called ‘selective mutism’.
Just wanted to share nonverbal is also used with people with autism and adhd who either struggle to speak or choose not to “Being nonverbal or non-speaking can occur for a variety of reasons. Many nonverbal autistic people choose not to speak. They may find speech to be overloading, feel more comfortable with communicating another way or aren't confident enough to engage in full conversations.” As someone who sometimes goes nonverbal due to stress and it took me a long time to figure out what that was. Selective mutism isn’t a choice it is an anxiety disorder that leave people unable to speak with certain people or situations /settings
@@squigglemonster2634people use nonverbal but it's technically not correct. If someone is capable of speech in some situations but not others, that's selective mutism. And everything else you said is basically in agreement with what the original commenter said.
@@squigglemonster2634 I maybe should have made a more in detail comment, I didn’t mean for it to come across as if I was saying people are out there just not talking to people on purpose. In my daughter’s case it’s because of autism that she is non/pre-verbal, but, she is unable to form words at all, only sounds. I have a cousin who also has autism and struggled for years to learn to speak, she can now but has selective mutism. Although I know my cousin struggles to speak in public and she can’t physically do that, which isn’t an active choice, I know the drs medically make a distinction in both cases.
It's amazing. Like I know that erotica relies a bit on some purple prose to have an effect, but my god, I can't feel anything from these passages but the author getting off on their own perceived writing skillzzzz.
I wish I had that initial thought because mine was "Oh my god, does my writing sound like that?" After I wrote this sentence, I then had to read it aloud to make sure it made sense. 🤦♀
This book kind of gave off the vibe of a poorly written creepypasta. The excessively tragic backstories, the way the characters were described, the sort of cutesy/edgy killer, etc. A lot of these things remind of bad creepypastas my friends and i have read and written. Though we never wrote as graphic and disturbing backstories. We were so young then so it was more bullying and other sort of traumas children tend to come up with.
When I was 10-12, I had edgy Gacha Life OCs just like these. Weird appearances (that come straight out of creepypasta fanfics), dark backstories, edgy emo personalities, etc. I even had a damn clown. The only difference is I didn’t make them have sex with each other. I was 10…this is a published book…Where’s my chance at becoming a “dark romance” author??😭
As a person who got SAed a few years ago , it still haunts me to this day to the point I have grown serious anxiety and fear people . These authors truly don't know the trauma which SA victims experience :(.
Sibby sounds like a fan fic version of Harley Quinn to me. "Hunting Adeline" broke my brain, I literally googled, "would a home lobotomy make me forget what I just read." I finished about 4.5 chapters before I threw it in the fire. Some how it's 10X worse than "Haunting Adeline."
While y'all is yelling at the author's writing work on yours bc you're probably a grow women and don't know the difference between "through" and "threw".
@arrianagarcia7761 when you’re a published author putting your work out into the open, you are opening yourself up to criticism for your grammar and content. Nobody is yelling here, but are pointing out issues we have with the finished work. And your grammar and spelling isn’t exactly stellar either here, babygirl
@@arrianagarcia7761@arrianagarcia7761 Yes, I should have checked my comment before I posted it, but I won't comment on your grammar and spelling, (you might want to double-check your comment before you post). The book is sad and problematic; it comes off as torture porn. Being taboo for taboo sake doesn't make a novel in my opinion. If you loved it, I am happy you found something you liked, and I encourage to dig into the author's catalog. I have read more than enough of her work to come to the conclusion that it is not for me.
the internal dialogue's exposition is so far from naturalistic that all I can think of is the youtuber alizee yeezy going 'who are you talking to? i'm getting a restraining order' when reviewing the Cast books.
Just to be clear, there was a fascist regime in Romania during WW2, just like in Italy and Spain. Romania has a large number of Roma people who suffered greatly, and continue to suffer as second class citizens who suffer from discrimination. This is why the term 'gypsy' is a slur as it is used against the Roma people as a degrading stereotype of their culture and traditions.
I think after this you deserve to talk about at least THREE books that you like, MINIMUM. as a treat. this shit was painful to hear secondhand, I can't even imagine reading it.
It reads a lot like someone writing for a kink they themselves are not serious about and are projecting and imagining the wildest things. Coincidentally, it also reads like ooo~spooky jeff the killer fanfiction. It baffles me that the author is a late 20-year old and that this was published and not posted on wattpad.
I love how the books are almost entirely made around fighting/killing PDFs but the young main characters are infantilized and the writing sexualizes them at every turn…But it’s ok sense it’s hot I guess!! (sarcasm)
Okay sorry to pop in but I'm a Greek buff and Chronos/Cronus is a weird thing because they're both spellings of the Titan King, but Cronus/os is the most often used. The confusing thing comes in because Chronos is the spelling of the Primordial God of Time. Titans came after the primordials. And Cronos is... also a Time god, but specifically of Destructive Time, so how time withers away all things. Chronos is just, the entirety of Time. So uh.... technically both versions are right because both names have been used for both... and they're both time gods... the only big difference being that one came before the other and no one who seems to reference Greek myth even acknowledges the primoridal Chronos just makes this whole thing confusing. .....tl;dr cronus and chronos are technically both right and not a misspelling
As someone who was in a cult. If you live at the headquarters you could have been given a job of knowing everything about flowers. There were quite a few actually. Hope this makes you laugh
The way my imposter syndrome ✨️evaporated✨️ after listening to the lackluster, lackadaisically limped attempt at writing in this prequel. [Also, leave Ashnikko out of this, Carlton.]
That voice you used for Sibby is simultaneously so fitting and for some reason really just fills me with unbridled rage. You've done a fantastic job encapsulating how upset this book makes me.
Y'know, as someone who is not evil and has a lot of acne scars, it kinda bums me out that there's at least two shitty "ugly" characters that are mentioned to have acne scars (Gary and the guard at the end). :(
My understanding is that traumatic or selective mutism is the correct psychological term for someone who can speak but doesn’t due to trauma or anxiety.
I consulted with a few friends (jewish, eastern european, or both) irt the possible antisemitism, and we had a good productive conversation about whethet this could be considered direct antisemitism or if it was more akin to something like the old timey xenophobia directed at eastern europeans (think something like dracula; theres definitely a strain of antisemitism there, but it also brings in a lot of anti immigrant and anti "oriental" tropes) In the end we couldnt come to a conclusion whether theres enough to definitively state that this was antisemitic, it also seems irrelevant considering how fundementally fascistic the whole series is? I dont blame people for trying to pin down the details, but like. The bigger issue to me is less "how hooked a nose before its antisemitism" and more the issue thst the author inherently ties a character's moral goodness to their proximity to very western concepts of beauty. You can immediately tell the villains and the heroes apart because the villains are always old and ugly, and even the few villains like claire or francesca or Xavier who are meant to be somewhat attractive are still othered or implied to look attactive via some artificial means. Granted that alone is pretty bad but mostly just juvenile, like, childrens stories portray all the heroes as good and pretty amd the villains as ugly, it happens all the time. But combine it with the other elements of the series (the evil that is simultaneously so powerful it controls the government but so weak zade just kills them with no problems, the fact this enemy has no motivation beyond being evil for its own sake, the focus on protecting women and children as objects, the fact that the hero does the same exact things as the villains but he is good because he is inherently good, the blood libel, etc) and its clear this is a pattern of super fashy thought. I dont know how much the author intends this and how much is her genuinely being dumb but the end result is still the same. She wrote a book about how an evil conspiracy of all powerful but weak and degenerate others wants to torture your women and your children for no reason besides being inherently, ontologically evil, and can obly be easily defeated by the handsome, inherently good for no reason violent hero. And no amount of changing the jewish last names or having a sassy black friend or a bisexual hacker is going to change that.
You put it so nicely! My two cents on one of your points : Sometimes, things are deliberately fashy (propaganda, hate rhetoric etc) Sometimes things are unintentionally fashy - not because the author is tone deaf or a poor writer, but because the fash is _internalized_ so deeply that it permeates the 'art' without the creator's conscious knowledge. It's just reality to them. I say this as an observation made in my field of study (though I believe it's plenty obvious to many people who encounter these things already)
@@worm2976 yep, the tying beauty to moral goodness especially is a thing I see so many people do, it's a great example of something that's just SO culturally ingrained
Sibyl (Sibby) is probably a reference to Ancient Greek oracles! I think it's a pretty common name to give to characters who have visions, or in this case, hallucination
I find it interesting that the main character is singing a song sung by young girls as the opener, mostly because the reason freddy krueger is burned and comes to people in their dreams is because he was a child unaliver.
Tragic that this doll-themed book's playlist has two Ashnikko songs but came out half a year before Ashnikko's cover of Plastic Doll. Not that it would have improved the experience.
It’s technically copyright infringement to use the Freddy song in a published book. Unless Carlton got permission from the copyright holder they can sue her.
"Shit sandwich of a sentence" 😂 These reviews of absolutely horrible books are really helping me get through a really long work day as I edit books for clients, so thank you!
Why am I getting the idea she only put Melanie's songs on the Playlist because of the aesthetic and not the meaning? I'm halfway through the review and nothing really makes sense with the meaning of them (except maybe the dysfunctional family from dollhouse)
It was just announced that HD was offered a 6 figure deal through a trad publisher for another novella . Very concerning since this is the quality she puts out 😭
Okay the presence of a clown named Timothy really does make me worry that this is bad Harley Quinn fanfic like others are mentioning.... the Batman character Tim Drake was kidnapped by the Joker and tortured/brainwashed until he became "Joker Jr." in a Batman Beyond spinoff movie :/
Or Halsey, a woman who's been open about her mental health struggles since the beginning of her career. I'm sure she'd love to be associated with this trash.
Regarding the possible antisemitism (always a fun line to write): To me your description sounded more like anti-roma stereotypes. Especially with him being from Romania (not the same thing of course, though there is a large Roma population there) and him hypnotising effect on people. Maybe I was also a bit extra primed to expect that in a story centering around "carnies", as those tropes often go hand in hand with roma and traveller stereotypes.
Ok like. I've read my hero fanfiction where people write toga exactly like this and it makes me want to die Also I'm so mad cause the playlist is basically my music taste Also you're hilariously good at keeping that voice up. 10/10
Honestly I think the ending of this book and this series as a whole would've been more interesting if Sybbie and Zade stayed enemies. Sybbie would rightfully see Zade as the evil man he is and immediately escalate things into a fight after killing those men since she's impulsive. Then Zade could kill Sybbie, rendering her mission for "justice" pointless which would force Zade to reflect on his own mission. Then he could either man up and leave Adeline alone or stop being a hypocrite and fully embrace his evil nature even if he's still doing Qanon shit.
Do you honestly think it would not end in the characters never changing at all and eithee Zade cool-aplha-guying his way out of killing Sibby....or Sibby getting it on w Zade's corpse before. Oh. No! He's actually still alive! Cuts to Zade violently doing Sibby which she'd like against her will because we have to prove every two pages that Zade is zaddy?
this reminds me of 2010s creepypasta fanfic but with none of the charm of it being written by a kid. this is just deranged harley quinn fanfic written by a grown ass adult
Okay about the mute v non-verbal, it really depends on the specific condition because non-verbal typically refers to neurodivergent individuals incapable of speech (very often specifically autistic people) mute is more general and can refer to a variety of things that can cause the inability to speak (although typically long term is implied) and then there is selective muteness which is the temporary inability to speak on and off (over a long period of time) this is its own condition. In reference to the story I’m not exactly sure what to classify that character as but you are correct that saying “a mute” when referring to a person is weird phrasing, I don’t know why they didn’t just say “he is mute” instead because that would have made more sense. If anyone would like to add on or correct me that is perfectly welcome and I will edit my comment in response.
Wait. WAIT. The ghastly writing of the best friend in Haunting Adeline….was the classic hypersexualized stereotype Black Best Friend? How did I not notice. It all makes sense now. She’s written the exact same way all these authors write these token characters. ETA: *especially* the contempt and degradation in Adeline’s thoughts that she then handwaves as ‘lovingly keeping her from getting too cocky’ Re: the description of the fifteen year old victim, idk if this was a serious or rhetorical question but I thought about it too much. I guess I’d try to warn for toxic coping via suicidal ideation projected onto other victims, but I don’t even know if that’s adequate. (And it doesn’t make any excuses for why Adeline had the exact same POV unless that’s how she really thinks about being stuck with Z leaking out.)
Dammit I was getting ready while listening and brushing my teeth when you said “the lunacy in this book is an untapped natural resource.” Now I have to clean toothpaste off my mirror.
honestly i’m glad you used that child-like voice cause it highlights how creepy it is for a “grown woman” to act like this 😭 also i don’t know how anyone could’ve taken her seriously with a normal voice ..
I'm a recent subscriber and am kind of obsessed with these rant reviews. Love that you read so many excerpts in the best possible way, as I don't think I could possibly subject myself to reading any of these books. I get the joy I need from them. Dark romance is a truly fascinating genre, though. Like, it's a deep dive into the female psyche that society kind of forced women into. V.C. Andrews with no restraint.
You are so funny!! A lot of the grammar stuff doesn't bother me too much, but its hilarious hearing you call it out! Great comedic response and commentary! Thanks for doing these!
Ur relationship with us the audience is basically like a dark romance in a way. You put urself through psychological torment to satiate our morbid curiosities 😭 a more well developed plot than in the books u read anyways😂
this is disability allyship in action. my adhd doesn't let me actually read all the weird smut that I want to be horrified/entertained by. your recaps are nothing short of the lords work as far as I'm concerned.
I was sure I had subscribed after I watched the Haunting Adeline video (pure gold), but apparently not! But for once, the algorithm worked and you popped up again, so now I’m finally subscribed 👍🏻
Okay. Is it just me or is this book series really fully committed to the "if he's ugly it's rape, if he's hot it's kinky sex" logic? Like every rapist, and I do mean every single one, is ugly, with the exception of Zade - and I guess Sibby too, considering what she does to her victims.
Dark Romance as a genre is interesting because you've got two requirements: "dark" and "romance". Some dark, heavy, morally dubious subject matter+the romantic relationship between two or more people. And yet this book could only manage the first half, and utterly miss arguably the most important part. Incredible. But I suppose "Erotic Horror" doesn't get you tiktok virality.
On the possible antisemitism, I've always felt it seemed more that she was describing Romani features rather than Jewish. Whatever she intended, the author is definitely perpetuating negative stereotypes.
46:48 Late to the party here-- But there was a Canadian serial killer (Piggy Palace Killer, forgot his name) who dissected women and fed them to his pigs and sent the rest of the stuff off to the meat facility. His father's name was Leonard. How delightful.
Please dont read Hunting Adeline (the second book). It has horrific descriptions of rape and is overall terryfing, the worst part is that it's supposed to be hot after they rescue her and she "rediscovers" sex but it's just horrible, traumatising and just... don't do it to yourself. I'm not easly triggered and I was very triggered especially because Adelines thoughts during rape are so raw and real...
Honestly as someone who's been rape and trafficked, I could not find my experience in this book at all, it wasn't relatable it just felt like the author was adding that to make Zade look like a good guy and to make us feel pity for our mc. Or maybe it was just that I couldn't relate because I am a guy lol. Either way it's horrible book, I detest it when people use rape as a sympathy card
This video made me realize how difficult it must be to write scary child characters, because this book's protagonist will be doing the most horrendous shit, like literally necro, but I can't concentrate or any of this horror seriously because of all this pseudo baby talk she does. Is the pseudo baby talk supposed to show how her childhood traumas made parts of her mind get "stuck" as a child? Is it a kink thing?
I'm not saying gatekeeping needs to come back but like...maybe like, a small landscape edging (no pun intended) or something...like, not the great wall of China but like, maybe a password to a treehouse XD
Aside from the ~erotic~, the murderous doll thing really feels like something i could have written. I wrote a story where a teenager found a girl in his walls. Actually i take it back, because I don't think i would've taken it this far
my imposter syndrome have been exorcised and i feel so motivated to write my own work now knowing that at least i have dignity and aspiration for quality writing. thanks for suffering for us
I feel so stupid because I didn't know what PDF file ring meant when I first heard it in your Haunting Adeline review and it kept me up at night. Then I watched this review where you said it again and it clicked. Boy is censorship a gift!
There's something so weird to me about how the book is incessantly infantilizing Sibby by making her act like a literal child, but then combining that with graphic sex scenes of her getting off on necrophilia. I know the Haunting Adeline trilogy is made for the purpose of being edgy Wattpad fanfic that got published and is edgy for the sake of being edgy, but its so weird that these serious subjects like human trafficking and child abuse are lumped in with all of these shitty sex scenes. There was no point to add any of that because the book never talks about it unless they're trying to make Zade seem like a good person. Its just a buffer to excuse his actions. To make what he does less "wrong" even though the book acknowledges that its rape. Sibby being so childlike yet so sexualized rubs me the wrong way because this is the same book series that talks about children getting sex trafficked just for the sake of being like "ohhh look how fucked up that is!! Thank god Zade is here!!" instead of actually trying to spread awareness about a serious issue. The vilification of prescription drugs and therapy is another thing that rubs me the wrong way considering that young, impressionable teenage girls are the demographic for Haunting Adeline and it's shitty sequels. This book is terrible in every way. Not only does it excuse rape, lack proper trigger warnings (IT WASN'T CONSENSUAL NONCONSENT SHE DIDN'T CONSENT), and discuss human trafficking like it's just grounds for an edgy backstory, its also just terribly written.
I genuinely think that this entire Satan's affair thing was written SOLELY bc the author desperately wanted to inflict that line toward the end where sibby is talking about the weird senator man who wants to "f*** her innocent little p****" on the world. 😔
27:45 Googling disturbing topics... How very writerly! I once had to find out how long it would take a severed human head to stop bleeding (for a book i was writing!)
not to defend miss carlton, but the characters don't actually smell the way she describes them as. sibby is just hallucinating it, just like her henchmen
As someone who also had to suffer through Haunting (and Hunting) Adeline, I stumbled onto your channel more by accident. But honestly, it quickly became an absolute spot of comfort for me (well, your wonderful and perfectly summarizing commentary did, not really the books :D). I normally never comment on RUclips, but you have got yourself a new fan here! Can't wait to see your channel grow, you absolutely deserve it!
I just found your channel a few days ago, when i was searching for a spoiler review of Haunting Adeline. I have been thoroughly entertained. "I know what the grim reaper looks like, i play the sims" i am dead 💀
I assure you no one who experiences hallucinations or is mentally ill will think you are making fun of them because the depictions in this book are so far from real experiences.
THANK YOU ALL SO MUCH FOR 5K (and 6, 7, 8 and 9K too!) You sure know how to make a gal feel special. I appreciate you all so much. ALSO - fair warning for all... I yell a lot in this so I recommend starting the volume out at a low/medium.
you deserve it girl!
Rachel’s promotion sent me here, and she did NOT disappoint 💅🏼
Now you're up to 10k! Huge congrats!!!!
Good job! I'm getting back into reading, so it feels good to have a companion to listen to about books 😊! Your videos are awesome, of good quality and your personality really shines through them! Love the long format! 😊
8:36 H.D. CARLTON YOU BETTER LEAVE ISAAC DUNBAR OUT OF THIS!!
Okay, so the bad people smell like rotten eggs and the good ones smell like flowers. Fine, I can live with that. I actually kind of like that concept tbh
Zade doesn’t smell like rot, but he does smell like brimstone...
Brimstone is another word for sulfur, which is notorious for smelling like, you guessed it, rotten eggs.
Great job accidentally shooting yourself in the foot, author-
I see the phrase “I don’t want to yuck anyone’s yum” but like what if the yum is already sooooo yucky? What then? WHAT THEN?!?
I'll defend your right to like what you like BUT I will also not be quiet about my dislike. A mutual disagreement with a foundation of respect. At least that's what I try to accomplish.
“I may not agree with your dirty doings but I will defend with my life your right to do them!” - Buster Bluth, arrested development
@@weirdobookclub I also feel like the key is you’re critiquing the execution of the themes and concept, not just yelling at people for having fetishes you don’t share. I honestly really appreciate that because I keep going into dark romance hoping for something that will be messy but still a fun ride and being infuriated by how they execute and handle the content, but when looking for cathartic rants just seeing lurid ‘bad fetish!’ clickbait instead of well-deserved excoriation for the details. You’re a breath of fresh air and always so fun and funny.
Thank you for this 🥹 I’m so glad you like my stuff thank you for watching!
There's not yucking anyone's yum and then there's watching in horror as someone tongues an elementary school's bathroom trashcan.
Why does this read like alt-right Harley Quinn fanfic 😭
Bc we are not allowed to have nice things
That's what I thought immediately. Is she supposed to be Harley Quinn but worse?
“I know what the grim reaper looks like, I play The Sims.” This video is a GIFT
I play the sims, I know everything about everything.
My daughter can not speak and it’s written in her medical notes as ‘non verbal’.
Being able to speak but choosing not to, or not being able to in certain situations is called ‘selective mutism’.
Thank you for this!! I was worried I would get it wrong and I appreciate the clarification
@@weirdobookclub that’s ok. Happy to help :)
Just wanted to share nonverbal is also used with people with autism and adhd who either struggle to speak or choose not to “Being nonverbal or non-speaking can occur for a variety of reasons. Many nonverbal autistic people choose not to speak. They may find speech to be overloading, feel more comfortable with communicating another way or aren't confident enough to engage in full conversations.” As someone who sometimes goes nonverbal due to stress and it took me a long time to figure out what that was. Selective mutism isn’t a choice it is an anxiety disorder that leave people unable to speak with certain people or situations /settings
@@squigglemonster2634people use nonverbal but it's technically not correct. If someone is capable of speech in some situations but not others, that's selective mutism.
And everything else you said is basically in agreement with what the original commenter said.
@@squigglemonster2634 I maybe should have made a more in detail comment, I didn’t mean for it to come across as if I was saying people are out there just not talking to people on purpose. In my daughter’s case it’s because of autism that she is non/pre-verbal, but, she is unable to form words at all, only sounds. I have a cousin who also has autism and struggled for years to learn to speak, she can now but has selective mutism. Although I know my cousin struggles to speak in public and she can’t physically do that, which isn’t an active choice, I know the drs medically make a distinction in both cases.
good lord the nonexistent writing quality in this one has singlehandedly cured my imposter syndrome 😭😭
So. Real. Bestie. Omg I’m sure you’re an amazing writing, comparison to HD Can’t-write-for-hell or not
It's amazing. Like I know that erotica relies a bit on some purple prose to have an effect, but my god, I can't feel anything from these passages but the author getting off on their own perceived writing skillzzzz.
I wish I had that initial thought because mine was "Oh my god, does my writing sound like that?" After I wrote this sentence, I then had to read it aloud to make sure it made sense. 🤦♀
Edit: My dumb self accidentally replied to the wrong comment. I absolutely agree with your sentiment, though.
LMAOOOO SAME like. i know for a fact that my hunger games fanfics are significantly better written than anything I. N. Competent has pumped out
This book kind of gave off the vibe of a poorly written creepypasta. The excessively tragic backstories, the way the characters were described, the sort of cutesy/edgy killer, etc. A lot of these things remind of bad creepypastas my friends and i have read and written. Though we never wrote as graphic and disturbing backstories. We were so young then so it was more bullying and other sort of traumas children tend to come up with.
LITERALLY!!! this is so 2014 jeff the killer self insert fanfiction 😭
oohhh I'd wondered where that readerbase went. Of course, it matches so well with the rise of dark romance
When I was 10-12, I had edgy Gacha Life OCs just like these. Weird appearances (that come straight out of creepypasta fanfics), dark backstories, edgy emo personalities, etc. I even had a damn clown. The only difference is I didn’t make them have sex with each other. I was 10…this is a published book…Where’s my chance at becoming a “dark romance” author??😭
@@minnie_malism was just about to comment this LMAO its a throwback in a bad way
I'm getting the vibes from this novella that HD Carlton definitely wrote sexy-emo-boy Jeff the Killer fanfiction when she was younger
I won’t kink-shame but I will kink-ask-why 😭😭😭
FLOP. HER. FOLDS??????????????
I’m getting creative with my euphemisms so I don’t get in trouble!!!!
ITS ONLY CHAPTER THREE??????????????????????????????????
@@ReadswithRachel she holds the secrets of time, Rach
I’m screaming, crying, throwing up..
@@weirdobookclubI had a vivid image of an elephant flapping her ears, and if I had to see it in my mind’s eye you do too now >.>
"he doesn't smell like rot" Brimstone is just sulfur, which notoriously smells like... Rotten eggs!
Glad to know Zade canonically smells like farts.
Farts and burnt roses lol
This explains why Adeline talks about farting SO MUCH in Hunting Adeline 💀
I REALLY want audio books to have an option to hear their voice actors honest reaction while reading the books they're narrating
YES!!!
I'm convinced HD has no idea what SA trauma is like.
It's horrible. It haunts people. It's TRAUMA. It should be handled with care.
As a person who got SAed a few years ago , it still haunts me to this day to the point I have grown serious anxiety and fear people . These authors truly don't know the trauma which SA victims experience :(.
Just saw this comment cause I'm rewatching @@YeeHeeeand I totally agree.
Sibby sounds like a fan fic version of Harley Quinn to me. "Hunting Adeline" broke my brain, I literally googled, "would a home lobotomy make me forget what I just read." I finished about 4.5 chapters before I threw it in the fire. Some how it's 10X worse than "Haunting Adeline."
literally!!!! Like she rivals some of the bad Harley portrayals I see in fanfiction
*threw 🫶🏼
While y'all is yelling at the author's writing work on yours bc you're probably a grow women and don't know the difference between "through" and "threw".
@arrianagarcia7761 when you’re a published author putting your work out into the open, you are opening yourself up to criticism for your grammar and content. Nobody is yelling here, but are pointing out issues we have with the finished work. And your grammar and spelling isn’t exactly stellar either here, babygirl
@@arrianagarcia7761@arrianagarcia7761 Yes, I should have checked my comment before I posted it, but I won't comment on your grammar and spelling, (you might want to double-check your comment before you post). The book is sad and problematic; it comes off as torture porn. Being taboo for taboo sake doesn't make a novel in my opinion. If you loved it, I am happy you found something you liked, and I encourage to dig into the author's catalog. I have read more than enough of her work to come to the conclusion that it is not for me.
It’s a disservice to dark romance to call this dark romance, this is just pure torture porn
I mean, where was the romance??
Right?! I'm getting more splatter punk than anything vaguely romantic!
I wouldn’t call her going through actually torture pron.
I’m convinced a lot of writers just substitute “porn” for “romance” at this point
the internal dialogue's exposition is so far from naturalistic that all I can think of is the youtuber alizee yeezy going 'who are you talking to? i'm getting a restraining order' when reviewing the Cast books.
Love Alizee sm
I love Alizee too.
Just to be clear, there was a fascist regime in Romania during WW2, just like in Italy and Spain. Romania has a large number of Roma people who suffered greatly, and continue to suffer as second class citizens who suffer from discrimination. This is why the term 'gypsy' is a slur as it is used against the Roma people as a degrading stereotype of their culture and traditions.
I think after this you deserve to talk about at least THREE books that you like, MINIMUM. as a treat. this shit was painful to hear secondhand, I can't even imagine reading it.
I’ve got two rave reviews ready to go!!!
It reads a lot like someone writing for a kink they themselves are not serious about and are projecting and imagining the wildest things. Coincidentally, it also reads like ooo~spooky jeff the killer fanfiction. It baffles me that the author is a late 20-year old and that this was published and not posted on wattpad.
I love how the books are almost entirely made around fighting/killing PDFs but the young main characters are infantilized and the writing sexualizes them at every turn…But it’s ok sense it’s hot I guess!!
(sarcasm)
It really gives like they were really trying to write Harley Quinn but like how icky hetero men view her and without any nuance. It's just so weird...
Mortis (Latin for death), Jackal, Cronus (a misspelling of Chronos?), Baine (the grim reaper), and Timothy
Okay sorry to pop in but I'm a Greek buff and Chronos/Cronus is a weird thing because they're both spellings of the Titan King, but Cronus/os is the most often used.
The confusing thing comes in because Chronos is the spelling of the Primordial God of Time. Titans came after the primordials. And Cronos is... also a Time god, but specifically of Destructive Time, so how time withers away all things. Chronos is just, the entirety of Time.
So uh.... technically both versions are right because both names have been used for both... and they're both time gods... the only big difference being that one came before the other and no one who seems to reference Greek myth even acknowledges the primoridal Chronos just makes this whole thing confusing.
.....tl;dr cronus and chronos are technically both right and not a misspelling
@@raynethescribe2772 oh :0 that’s so interesting!
And.... Timothy. 😂
“Who are you, who is so wise in the way of nightmare sadism?”
“There are some who call me… Tim?”
As someone who was in a cult. If you live at the headquarters you could have been given a job of knowing everything about flowers. There were quite a few actually. Hope this makes you laugh
The way my imposter syndrome ✨️evaporated✨️ after listening to the lackluster, lackadaisically limped attempt at writing in this prequel.
[Also, leave Ashnikko out of this, Carlton.]
Right? Books like this make me feel so much better about my writing, dear LORD.
That voice you used for Sibby is simultaneously so fitting and for some reason really just fills me with unbridled rage. You've done a fantastic job encapsulating how upset this book makes me.
Y'know, as someone who is not evil and has a lot of acne scars, it kinda bums me out that there's at least two shitty "ugly" characters that are mentioned to have acne scars (Gary and the guard at the end). :(
My understanding is that traumatic or selective mutism is the correct psychological term for someone who can speak but doesn’t due to trauma or anxiety.
43:30 "I know what the Grim Reaper looks like - I play The Sims." 😂💀
I have married the grim reaper on Sims more times than I can count, maam. No need for the description!!!
'my tummy bloats from the fullness' I almost legitimately threw up. thank you so much for your service.
I fully thought and believed that the "freddy's coming for you" was about FNAF and somehow I feel like that could've saved the book
@singingman2025 my exact thought! I'm so ancient 🥲😂
I feel old
I'm not even 20 yet and this made me feel old 🧍♂️
This author could never understand FNAF.
LOL me too
FNAF got popular when we were in elementary school my fellow 20 year old 😭
I consulted with a few friends (jewish, eastern european, or both) irt the possible antisemitism, and we had a good productive conversation about whethet this could be considered direct antisemitism or if it was more akin to something like the old timey xenophobia directed at eastern europeans (think something like dracula; theres definitely a strain of antisemitism there, but it also brings in a lot of anti immigrant and anti "oriental" tropes)
In the end we couldnt come to a conclusion whether theres enough to definitively state that this was antisemitic, it also seems irrelevant considering how fundementally fascistic the whole series is? I dont blame people for trying to pin down the details, but like. The bigger issue to me is less "how hooked a nose before its antisemitism" and more the issue thst the author inherently ties a character's moral goodness to their proximity to very western concepts of beauty. You can immediately tell the villains and the heroes apart because the villains are always old and ugly, and even the few villains like claire or francesca or Xavier who are meant to be somewhat attractive are still othered or implied to look attactive via some artificial means.
Granted that alone is pretty bad but mostly just juvenile, like, childrens stories portray all the heroes as good and pretty amd the villains as ugly, it happens all the time. But combine it with the other elements of the series (the evil that is simultaneously so powerful it controls the government but so weak zade just kills them with no problems, the fact this enemy has no motivation beyond being evil for its own sake, the focus on protecting women and children as objects, the fact that the hero does the same exact things as the villains but he is good because he is inherently good, the blood libel, etc) and its clear this is a pattern of super fashy thought.
I dont know how much the author intends this and how much is her genuinely being dumb but the end result is still the same. She wrote a book about how an evil conspiracy of all powerful but weak and degenerate others wants to torture your women and your children for no reason besides being inherently, ontologically evil, and can obly be easily defeated by the handsome, inherently good for no reason violent hero. And no amount of changing the jewish last names or having a sassy black friend or a bisexual hacker is going to change that.
👏👏 Tysm for articulating this so well
You put it so nicely! My two cents on one of your points :
Sometimes, things are deliberately fashy (propaganda, hate rhetoric etc)
Sometimes things are unintentionally fashy - not because the author is tone deaf or a poor writer, but because the fash is _internalized_ so deeply that it permeates the 'art' without the creator's conscious knowledge. It's just reality to them.
I say this as an observation made in my field of study (though I believe it's plenty obvious to many people who encounter these things already)
@@worm2976 yep, the tying beauty to moral goodness especially is a thing I see so many people do, it's a great example of something that's just SO culturally ingrained
Sibyl (Sibby) is probably a reference to Ancient Greek oracles! I think it's a pretty common name to give to characters who have visions, or in this case, hallucination
I came to the comments to make sure someone else brought this up, because that was my thought as well.
ngl, with the 17 siblings & raised in an abusive cult i think she’s supposed to be a Duggar
I find it interesting that the main character is singing a song sung by young girls as the opener, mostly because the reason freddy krueger is burned and comes to people in their dreams is because he was a child unaliver.
Tragic that this doll-themed book's playlist has two Ashnikko songs but came out half a year before Ashnikko's cover of Plastic Doll. Not that it would have improved the experience.
It def would’ve made the list tho!
Sybil also refers to the prophetess in Greek mythology. Hopefully that’s what HD Carlton was going for
She does make small references to Greek mythology in the second book.
It’s technically copyright infringement to use the Freddy song in a published book. Unless Carlton got permission from the copyright holder they can sue her.
"Shit sandwich of a sentence" 😂 These reviews of absolutely horrible books are really helping me get through a really long work day as I edit books for clients, so thank you!
Omg, thank you so much for this! I'm so glad I could provide entertainment for ya!
Why am I getting the idea she only put Melanie's songs on the Playlist because of the aesthetic and not the meaning?
I'm halfway through the review and nothing really makes sense with the meaning of them (except maybe the dysfunctional family from dollhouse)
If I found out that she just chose terms and found songs with titles that included those terms… I wouldn’t be surprised.
It was just announced that HD was offered a 6 figure deal through a trad publisher for another novella . Very concerning since this is the quality she puts out 😭
NO I refuse to accept this.
Not gonna lie every time the mic spikes out i die laughing
Even the mic was struggling through this one
This is giving the vibes that HD Carlton thinks she’s soooo cool. Such a kewl gworl.
Got 🎶”Peter Pan is going to murder thee” 🎶 vibes 😂
Oh yep you did indeed reference that 🫶
Nooooooo 😂😂😂 I’m dying ahhhhh
Is this from hooked?
@@ll2323 it’s from the Never King!
This is SENDING me
Okay the presence of a clown named Timothy really does make me worry that this is bad Harley Quinn fanfic like others are mentioning.... the Batman character Tim Drake was kidnapped by the Joker and tortured/brainwashed until he became "Joker Jr." in a Batman Beyond spinoff movie :/
WHY WOULD SHE DO ASHNIKKO LIKE THIS 😭 don’t add her to your crap, Carlton
Or Halsey, a woman who's been open about her mental health struggles since the beginning of her career. I'm sure she'd love to be associated with this trash.
It feels like a borderline hate crime
Sibby reads a lot like a character written by a young teen girl who is going through a dark “random” phase that craves attention.
these "dark romance" novels are honestly making me think that if i write a nice coherent story i could get published- and thats a win to my ego!
Regarding the possible antisemitism (always a fun line to write): To me your description sounded more like anti-roma stereotypes. Especially with him being from Romania (not the same thing of course, though there is a large Roma population there) and him hypnotising effect on people.
Maybe I was also a bit extra primed to expect that in a story centering around "carnies", as those tropes often go hand in hand with roma and traveller stereotypes.
I am speechless... every time I thought it can't get worse I was wrong 💀
Then it got worser!
@@weirdobookclub HONESTLY!
Ok like.
I've read my hero fanfiction where people write toga exactly like this and it makes me want to die
Also I'm so mad cause the playlist is basically my music taste
Also you're hilariously good at keeping that voice up. 10/10
No bc the playlist is actually irritating me 😭
ughhh as a Toga fan who hasn't looked at fic yet I'm sad
No fr tho. I'm in the Arcane fandom, and people will write jinx's pov like this. istg it makes me want to CHEW SAWDUST
Honestly I think the ending of this book and this series as a whole would've been more interesting if Sybbie and Zade stayed enemies. Sybbie would rightfully see Zade as the evil man he is and immediately escalate things into a fight after killing those men since she's impulsive. Then Zade could kill Sybbie, rendering her mission for "justice" pointless which would force Zade to reflect on his own mission. Then he could either man up and leave Adeline alone or stop being a hypocrite and fully embrace his evil nature even if he's still doing Qanon shit.
Do you honestly think it would not end in the characters never changing at all and eithee Zade cool-aplha-guying his way out of killing Sibby....or Sibby getting it on w Zade's corpse before. Oh. No! He's actually still alive! Cuts to Zade violently doing Sibby which she'd like against her will because we have to prove every two pages that Zade is zaddy?
New weirdo book club praise the lord
HALLELUJAH
"She might not be a good writer but she may hold to secrets of time" sent me! New to the channel but instant fave. I appreciate your humor.
This painfully reminds me of a Jeff the killer fanfic I heard once.
this reminds me of 2010s creepypasta fanfic but with none of the charm of it being written by a kid. this is just deranged harley quinn fanfic written by a grown ass adult
When a little novella gives us a rant review longer than an hour? You know it’s gonna be rough 😬
Okay about the mute v non-verbal, it really depends on the specific condition because non-verbal typically refers to neurodivergent individuals incapable of speech (very often specifically autistic people) mute is more general and can refer to a variety of things that can cause the inability to speak (although typically long term is implied) and then there is selective muteness which is the temporary inability to speak on and off (over a long period of time) this is its own condition.
In reference to the story I’m not exactly sure what to classify that character as but you are correct that saying “a mute” when referring to a person is weird phrasing, I don’t know why they didn’t just say “he is mute” instead because that would have made more sense.
If anyone would like to add on or correct me that is perfectly welcome and I will edit my comment in response.
Wait. WAIT. The ghastly writing of the best friend in Haunting Adeline….was the classic hypersexualized stereotype Black Best Friend? How did I not notice. It all makes sense now. She’s written the exact same way all these authors write these token characters. ETA: *especially* the contempt and degradation in Adeline’s thoughts that she then handwaves as ‘lovingly keeping her from getting too cocky’
Re: the description of the fifteen year old victim, idk if this was a serious or rhetorical question but I thought about it too much. I guess I’d try to warn for toxic coping via suicidal ideation projected onto other victims, but I don’t even know if that’s adequate. (And it doesn’t make any excuses for why Adeline had the exact same POV unless that’s how she really thinks about being stuck with Z leaking out.)
OMG you’re right. I knew there was a reason that I was uncomfortable when Sibby refers to Daya as “the pretty black girl” 👁️👄👁️
Oh, crap, you're right! 😱
Ok but why so much hatred towards people with acne scars
Dammit I was getting ready while listening and brushing my teeth when you said “the lunacy in this book is an untapped natural resource.” Now I have to clean toothpaste off my mirror.
😂😂😂
Also "I'm not crazy, I'm just passionate" is on a shirt somewhere
24:29 I'm gonna have to take a break because I can't. The sex stuff is horrendous
WHY
MAN BIG
Zade instantly being her dad for NO REASON makes me wanna 🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮🤮
"Crazy people are the most interesting" is a line in a Melanie Martinez song that I know she's heard because of this lazy playlist
honestly i’m glad you used that child-like voice cause it highlights how creepy it is for a “grown woman” to act like this 😭 also i don’t know how anyone could’ve taken her seriously with a normal voice ..
I'm only 17 minutes into this but I'm losing my shit over the voiceover lmfao, love your content
Thanks bud and thanks for watching too :)
I'm a recent subscriber and am kind of obsessed with these rant reviews. Love that you read so many excerpts in the best possible way, as I don't think I could possibly subject myself to reading any of these books. I get the joy I need from them.
Dark romance is a truly fascinating genre, though. Like, it's a deep dive into the female psyche that society kind of forced women into. V.C. Andrews with no restraint.
You are so funny!! A lot of the grammar stuff doesn't bother me too much, but its hilarious hearing you call it out! Great comedic response and commentary! Thanks for doing these!
Thank you for watching!! 🩷
i think I may have spoken too soon about the grammar stuff! OMG!! 😳🤣
@TatyanaVogt if it wasn’t consistently and constantly bad, I could’ve excused it.
Yeah English is my third language and normally I find grammar nitpicking low-key xenophobic. But Christ alive. Those book need editors!
Ur relationship with us the audience is basically like a dark romance in a way. You put urself through psychological torment to satiate our morbid curiosities 😭 a more well developed plot than in the books u read anyways😂
“I suffered for you” killed me 😂😂
God not a veiny man… veins are disgusting to me like watching people with big muscles and veins flex makes me gag
If my soul doesn’t smell like raspberries and adhd meds then idk what it would be
Love to listen while doing some crochet work, thanks for suffering for our entertainment
ahhh thank you thank you so much!
dude i’m also crocheting while watching!!!
That math rant had me in hysterics, you're so funny 😭😭
This is my second time watching this, and I have to say that the math rant around halfway thru is my fav part
1:01:27 the “SHUT UP” here was so good 😭 I can’t believe you survived this
this is disability allyship in action. my adhd doesn't let me actually read all the weird smut that I want to be horrified/entertained by. your recaps are nothing short of the lords work as far as I'm concerned.
I was sure I had subscribed after I watched the Haunting Adeline video (pure gold), but apparently not! But for once, the algorithm worked and you popped up again, so now I’m finally subscribed 👍🏻
Oh glad you’re back!!! Thanks for the sub 😘
Okay. Is it just me or is this book series really fully committed to the "if he's ugly it's rape, if he's hot it's kinky sex" logic? Like every rapist, and I do mean every single one, is ugly, with the exception of Zade - and I guess Sibby too, considering what she does to her victims.
Dark Romance as a genre is interesting because you've got two requirements: "dark" and "romance". Some dark, heavy, morally dubious subject matter+the romantic relationship between two or more people. And yet this book could only manage the first half, and utterly miss arguably the most important part. Incredible. But I suppose "Erotic Horror" doesn't get you tiktok virality.
Slap “Spicy” in front of it and you’ll get a bestseller
this reads like someone wanted to write harley quinn fan fiction but severely misunderstood the character. 🤢 i hate it.
On the possible antisemitism, I've always felt it seemed more that she was describing Romani features rather than Jewish. Whatever she intended, the author is definitely perpetuating negative stereotypes.
46:48
Late to the party here-- But there was a Canadian serial killer (Piggy Palace Killer, forgot his name) who dissected women and fed them to his pigs and sent the rest of the stuff off to the meat facility. His father's name was Leonard. How delightful.
Please dont read Hunting Adeline (the second book). It has horrific descriptions of rape and is overall terryfing, the worst part is that it's supposed to be hot after they rescue her and she "rediscovers" sex but it's just horrible, traumatising and just... don't do it to yourself. I'm not easly triggered and I was very triggered especially because Adelines thoughts during rape are so raw and real...
Honestly as someone who's been rape and trafficked, I could not find my experience in this book at all, it wasn't relatable it just felt like the author was adding that to make Zade look like a good guy and to make us feel pity for our mc. Or maybe it was just that I couldn't relate because I am a guy lol. Either way it's horrible book, I detest it when people use rape as a sympathy card
This video made me realize how difficult it must be to write scary child characters, because this book's protagonist will be doing the most horrendous shit, like literally necro, but I can't concentrate or any of this horror seriously because of all this pseudo baby talk she does. Is the pseudo baby talk supposed to show how her childhood traumas made parts of her mind get "stuck" as a child? Is it a kink thing?
A nice little moment happens in Shirley Jackson's short story The Renegade i'd say
The throwing of the mic 💀
6:35 she's in the walls... SHE'S IN THE GODDAMN WALLS
That math rant brought me right back to school days and the rage that I felt every time I had to suffer through a math class.
I'm not saying gatekeeping needs to come back but like...maybe like, a small landscape edging (no pun intended) or something...like, not the great wall of China but like, maybe a password to a treehouse XD
Sometimes I worry my writing isn't good enough for trad publishing. And then I see things like this and realize it's all luck and I'll be okay 😂
Omg how could you bring the innocent little lad whomst loves berries and cream into this???
I wrote him a formally apology and sent him some treats. He said he forgave me, did a little dance and off he went.
you are SO FUNNY. your videos get so many replays in my house bc they just make me LAUGH every time. your good taste in books is just a big bonus.
Ah thank you so much, this made my night.
As someone who works in a haunted house WTF is this book?!
Aside from the ~erotic~, the murderous doll thing really feels like something i could have written. I wrote a story where a teenager found a girl in his walls. Actually i take it back, because I don't think i would've taken it this far
my imposter syndrome have been exorcised and i feel so motivated to write my own work now knowing that at least i have dignity and aspiration for quality writing. thanks for suffering for us
Started to die when you said “flapping her folds” 😭😭😭😭 this vid was great !! 😂❤
Thank you! And thanks for watching 🩷
I feel so stupid because I didn't know what PDF file ring meant when I first heard it in your Haunting Adeline review and it kept me up at night. Then I watched this review where you said it again and it clicked. Boy is censorship a gift!
There's something so weird to me about how the book is incessantly infantilizing Sibby by making her act like a literal child, but then combining that with graphic sex scenes of her getting off on necrophilia. I know the Haunting Adeline trilogy is made for the purpose of being edgy Wattpad fanfic that got published and is edgy for the sake of being edgy, but its so weird that these serious subjects like human trafficking and child abuse are lumped in with all of these shitty sex scenes. There was no point to add any of that because the book never talks about it unless they're trying to make Zade seem like a good person. Its just a buffer to excuse his actions. To make what he does less "wrong" even though the book acknowledges that its rape.
Sibby being so childlike yet so sexualized rubs me the wrong way because this is the same book series that talks about children getting sex trafficked just for the sake of being like "ohhh look how fucked up that is!! Thank god Zade is here!!" instead of actually trying to spread awareness about a serious issue. The vilification of prescription drugs and therapy is another thing that rubs me the wrong way considering that young, impressionable teenage girls are the demographic for Haunting Adeline and it's shitty sequels.
This book is terrible in every way. Not only does it excuse rape, lack proper trigger warnings (IT WASN'T CONSENSUAL NONCONSENT SHE DIDN'T CONSENT), and discuss human trafficking like it's just grounds for an edgy backstory, its also just terribly written.
I genuinely think that this entire Satan's affair thing was written SOLELY bc the author desperately wanted to inflict that line toward the end where sibby is talking about the weird senator man who wants to "f*** her innocent little p****" on the world. 😔
your rant reviews are my favourite. you are A Legend.
Wow, thanks so much ☺️🩷
27:45 Googling disturbing topics... How very writerly! I once had to find out how long it would take a severed human head to stop bleeding (for a book i was writing!)
i am in love with the way you say noun and pronoun, sounds like a teacher :3
My biggest question is why the main character has the scent of a blood hound? 😭
not to defend miss carlton, but the characters don't actually smell the way she describes them as. sibby is just hallucinating it, just like her henchmen
As someone who also had to suffer through Haunting (and Hunting) Adeline, I stumbled onto your channel more by accident. But honestly, it quickly became an absolute spot of comfort for me (well, your wonderful and perfectly summarizing commentary did, not really the books :D). I normally never comment on RUclips, but you have got yourself a new fan here! Can't wait to see your channel grow, you absolutely deserve it!
I just found your channel a few days ago, when i was searching for a spoiler review of Haunting Adeline. I have been thoroughly entertained. "I know what the grim reaper looks like, i play the sims" i am dead 💀
I assure you no one who experiences hallucinations or is mentally ill will think you are making fun of them because the depictions in this book are so far from real experiences.