Haunting Adeline is getting a film adaptation and I'll be honest, I haven't read it and I don't care to, but the conversation around how it's not actually "dark romance" is making me tear my hair out because yes. Yes it is.
There are industry standard definitions for books. No publishing house is releasing a mislabeled booked so easily. If it seems mislabeled to you, that's your own misunderstanding of what the genre is and that's okay. We don't all know the finer details of publishing.
The romance genre is defined as works where the central plot is based around a romantic and/or sexual relationship where the main character and their love interest(s) end up in a relationship by the end of the book, commonly called a HEA or Happily Ever After. The HEA doesn't have to seem so "happy" to the audience, what matters is that they're together (at least for now).
Dark romance is a sub genre of romance, meaning it has to follow the rules of what makes a romance a romance, but it also has to have "dark" themes. Obviously, what makes something dark is subjective and broad, but we'll come back to that.
Dark romance does not have anything to with supernatural creatures and it never has. Supernatural/paranormal romance is its own genre, it just happens to strongly overlap with dark romance.
Gothic romance is not exactly a "sub-genre" of romance in that it is partially exempt from the HEA rule. The overall plot has to be about a romance, but it's also perfectly acceptable if one or both main characters is dead or not human or otherwise not capable of being in love in the end. The "HEA" in a gothic romance is largely vibes. Are they both dead but they died obsessed with each other? Great, that counts. The gothic part of the genre centers themes that are dark, macabre, and even grotesque and yes those things are often celebrated and romanticized within the story.
Haunting Adeline is marketed as a dark romance and a gothic romance. Just looking at the trigger warnings list and the summary that seems like a fair assessment. It's dark, it's gruesome, and it's morally questionable. All staples of both genres.
Dark romance is not all mafia romances where the mafia boss is a consent king who kills your enemies for you. If anything, that's a pretty new transformation of the genre and it's great that women have reached sexual liberation to the point that they no longer need romance or erotica to feature coercion in order to enjoy it without feeling guilty, but that's not what everyone is looking for in a dark romance.
"Dark" themes are everything from violence to rape to torture. At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if you think something is "too dark" to be dark romance. It's called dark romance not gray romance. Dark is dark. There are no limits.
So, what's the difference between erotic horror and dark romance then? Firstly, the intent. Romance is written with romance being the central plot. Erotica is written with sex being the central plot. Romance can have all the sex that it wants as long as romance is arguably the plot.
A demon possessing a character's body and raping them then fleeing the scene? That's erotic horror.
A demon possesing a character's body, deciding this is now their body and they're not leaving, causing the character to develop a romantic obsession with the demon? That's now a dark romance.
It's okay if Haunting Adeline makes you uncomfortable. It's supposed to. Your discomfort doesn't change what genre it suits. If you like dark romance but not when there's rape involved, you're completely allowed to. It's become a big genre with a lot to offer since it first exploded.
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