Haunting Adeline — Chapter One
We open to Addie, our FMC, whining about her mother, recurring and exhausting theme in this book, and how she has “very dark thoughts…no sane daughter should have” and how she’s “not always sane.”
Are we doing the bad creepypasta self-insert OC thing? All she’s missing is the hysterical giggling and trauma bingo backstory but I guess we have to wait until Hunting Adeline to unlock that character skin.
Addie’s mother, Sarina, embodies how I feel for a moment and just straight up tells Addie—whose name feels way too close to Bella, Ana, and Tessa from their respective franchises for my tastes—that she’s “being ridiculous.” Addie’s response is to “glare at [her phone]” and stay silent, which prompts Sarina to sigh loudly and heavily down the line. I feel that, and I’m not even Addie’s mother.
Addie continues to act like she’s sixteen and not twenty-six by ignoring Sarina’s pretty reasonable logic of “yes, you were left the house but you’re young and don’t have to live there” and instead she’s staring up at her ceiling, trying to find patience.
Instead of calmly reiterating that it’s her choice or something equally mature to show us how she doesn’t really care, Addie’s reply is “just because you don’t like it, doesn’t mean I can’t live in it” and then she promptly calls Sarina a bitch, explaining how she’s “always had a chip on her shoulder” and that “for the life of [Addie,] [she] can’t figure out why.”
Or maybe it’s you, Addie, sneering and looking your nose down at everything she says, finding problems when there really aren’t one, not giving her even a semblance of the understanding you give Zade ultimately. It reminds me of how Feyre always claimed Nesta was nasty, bitter and cruel when the narrative says that they both were horrible to one another.
There’s some back and forth between Addie and her mom, where her mom laments about her being a whole hour away! And then Addie thinks to herself that her gyno is just as far but she “still makes an effort” and how those visits are far more painful.
I’m going to start a count of each time Addie shits on her mother only, making jabs the way Feyre does to Nesta (and ignoring Elain like Addie ignores her father.)
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 9 (One for each instance of her shitting on her mom.)
There’s some more jabs at her mother, with Addie remarking how her “patience only lasts an entire sixty seconds” when it comes to Sarina and whining about her mother some more. I didn’t see any complaining, only concern from Sarina but I digress because Addie’s running internal dialogue is so exhausting to listen to and go through for the snark. She claims she spent more time in Parsons than at home with memories she “refuse[s] to let go of just because Mom didn’t get along with Nana.”
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 13
She’s “never understood the tension” until she grew older, going so far as to say that Nana was basically sunshine and gumdrops personified with “rose-colored glasses” while Sarina had been cursed with a scowl and went through life as if “her glasses got smashed when she was plunged out Nana’s vagina.” She then compared Sarina’s personality to a porcupine and calls her a bitch yet again.
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 17
She goes on to explain how her parents lived only a mile away from Parsons Manor and that her mother “could barely tolerate [her]”—which bumps the Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut count to 18—so that meant she spent a lot of time with her grandparents, at least until she left for college and her mother moved out of town…an hour away. She only mentions her mother moving and doesn’t say anything about her dad.
Did her parents divorce? Her father pass? Why would only her mother move out of town if, by the narrative we’re being force fed, her parents are still together? If they aren’t or if I’m getting something wrong, this whole section is the perfect chance to explain why Addie only talks about her mother—usually negatively—and why her father doesn’t get the same treatment.
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 20
Of course, we can’t have that so we get a long spiel about how she went to college but it didn’t worked out and she was forced to move back home until her “writing career took off,” which at that point allowed her to “travel around the country.”
I will say that I liked this part of Addie’s story. Think of how many people go to college and for whatever reason it doesn’t work out and they’re forced to move back home, biding their time until they get back to their feet. I also have a feeling this might be based off the author’s own experiences but that’s neither here nor there. Nana died a year ago and left Addie the house but she’d been avoiding it due to grief until now, with her deciding to not only go through her grandmother’s things but outright live in it.
Sarina remarks that she wishes “[Addie] had more ambition” and how she’d hoped Addie wouldn’t “waste away” like Nana did. Calling her own mother worthless feels a little much to me, but hey, I have my own familial issues so I can’t judge.
That being said, it gets a point because it’s painfully obvious that Sarina has her own mommy issues that she hasn’t worked through, despite being a successful real estate agent who could arguably afford plenty of therapy to unravel it.
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 23
And Addie’s not much better, saying a “snarl overtakes [her] face” in a knee-jerk rush of anger and hanging up abruptly but not before she delivers a scathing, very adult reply that doesn’t at all remind me of an angry sixteen-year-old who hates her white bread life: “‘Fuck off.’”
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 24
And here begins the count of Addie being immature, childish, or otherwise like she’s sixteen and not a fully functioning adult.
Addie hangs up and immediately starts ranting about how rude Sarina is for daring to speak about Nana like that, saying how “Nana certainly didn’t treat her the way she treats [Addie,] that’s for sure.”
How do you know? Did Nana tell you? Did your mother say that? I mean, I’m sure you know all of the things that went on in Nana’s house while your mother grew up. Even though, by your own admission, that your mother’s always had a chip on her shoulder that you yourself admit you’ve never tried to find the source of. I think you have no right to judge your mother for her feelings about Nana, regardless of how well Nana treated you. How many people had horrible parents that turned into amazing grandparents once they had grandkids?
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 25
Addie sighs dramatically and tells us all about the house instead of dwelling on the conversation, which has a “black roof spearing through the gloomy clouds” and a dense forest at its back with “their shadows crawling from the overgrowth with outstretched claws.” She’s delights in how creepy it looks, positioned on a cliff that overlooks the Bay (yes, with a capital B and yes, it doesn’t have name apparently despite this book apparently taking place in Seattle if I’m correct and the fact Carlton could’ve very easily made up a fake bay for Addie to gush over) and comments about the woods that isolate the house further.
After comparing it to living on a different planet and saying it has a “menacing, sorrowful aura,” she gushes about how she “fucking [loves] it.” Because of course she does.
We get a solid five—yes, five—paragraphs of how decaying the house is with “hundreds of vines crawl[ing] up all [the] sides” and there’s even fucking gargoyles on the roof. Is this a mansion or Medieval castle? She goes on and on and on about the “black siding [that’s] fading to a gray and starting to peel” and the paint job around the windows is chipping. There’s a front porch that she says has begun to sag that desperately needs work done.
She yammers some more about Nana and the flowers she used to plant then gets sidetracked by talking about what she could plant like “strawberries, lettuce, and herbs.”
In the middle of her pointless yammering, “movement from above” snags her attention and she stares up at the attic. The attic, she says, that has “no central air” but she doesn’t “doubt what [she] saw.”
She promptly forgets all about it to give me violent Bella flashbacks by sucking her bottom lip and says that she loves how her place looks like something out of the Addams’ family. And she claims that she just can’t explain it and instead wails and bleats about “fuck what [her] mother says.”
On and on she goes about how she’s a successful writer and how she tots doesn’t give a shit about what her mother says about her moving into the Manor (yes, Manor with a capital M.) She gloats about how she has the “freedom to live anywhere” and knows what she wants and how she tots doesn’t care about what anyone thinks, you guyz.
Especially “mommy dearest” as she so eloquently puts it.
Let’s go over each point, shall we?
• If you actually didn’t care what others—especially your own family—you wouldn’t have to reiterate how Amazing your job is and how you love it and how Totally Successful you are, just like the author, I suppose, with the book’s sudden spike of fame.
• It obviously bothers you that you’re living in your hometown or, rather, you feel incredibly attacked by your mother’s desire for bigger aspirations. Maybe your mother’s speaking from her own experience or just plain, good ole want to see your child thrive.
• If you were truly happy, you wouldn’t feel the need to go on a very pointed, angry tirade internally about how happy you are and how successful and how you totally don’t feel like a lowlife.
•Mommy…dearest? Mommy fucking DEAREST? How are you twenty-six with a running dialogue inside your head like this? How are you this immature? I’m literally her age and, while I make plenty of inappropriate jokes, I’m embarrassed at how twenty-eight-year-old toddler this comes across. She reads like a moody sixteen-year-old with all the idiotic things she says to herself.
If she was happy and truly didn’t care what her mother thought, she wouldn’t have spent the last twenty plus words telling us about it. You know that saying, the one about hit dogs and hollering? You’re giving me lots of that right now.
Act Your Age: 8 (Yes. One for each.)
Mommy Issues: the Snyder Cut: 32
It starts pouring and Addie grabs her things and bolts for the door, telling us how she “[inhales] the scent of fresh rain” on the way and “shakes [her] body out like a wet dog” when she reaches the porch since it’s transitioned from a light rain to downpour. She says that she just “[loves] storms” and not “be in them” and how it makes her so QuirkyNot Like Other Girls that she’d “prefer to cuddle up under the blankets with a mug of tea and a book while listening to the rain fall.”
And thus begins theSmells Like Misogyny: 2count.
Also who likes being caught in a cold downpour? Most people generally prefer not to get caught in them, since getting caught in one can lead to sickness and all the complications—physical and financial—that it brings. She’s very #Relatable, am I right? I bet you, dear reader, enjoy these very things just like Addie, and I believe it’ll be the start of the She’s Just Like Me count, where she turns to the audience and directly says this Super Relatable Moment™️ like this is an ad. So it’s even easier for the reader to imagine themselves in her shoes but instead of it coming across as how it was intended, it comes across as ham-fisted.
After the door gets stuck and she has to jimmy it, she tells us all about the cold air that greets her and makes a big show of shivering and complaining about it. Yeah, well, no shit, Addie—none of these things are conducive to being warm: cold rain, wet clothes, and a stale house with the heating probably turned off.
She says she as if her story starts like a poem from Poe and, instead of turning on the heat or drying herself off and changing out of her wet clothes since she’s freezing, she meanders through the house and gushes about how Dark and Goffik it is. To be frank, the interior sounds gaudy and ugly as hell, and I apologize for such a long quote but I think it speaks for itself.
I look up and smile when I see the black ribbed ceiling, made up of hundreds of thin, long pieces of wood. A grand chandelier is hanging over my head, golden steel warped in an intricate design with crystals dangling from the tips. It’s always been Nana’s most prized possession.
The black and white checkered floors lead directly to the black grand staircase—large enough to fit a piano through sideways—and flow off into the living room. My boots squeak against the tiles as I venture further inside.
This floor is primarily an open concept, making it feel like the monstrosity of the home could swallow you whole.
The living area is to the left of the staircase. I purse my lips and look around, nostalgia hitting me straight in the gut. Dust coasts every surface, and the smell of mothballs is overpowering, but it looks exactly how I last saw it, right before Nana died last year.
A large black stone fireplace is in the center of the living room on the far left wall, with red velvet couches squared around it. An ornate wooden coffee table sits in the middle, an empty vase atop the dark wood. Nana used to fill it with lilies, but now it only collects dust and bug carcasses.
The walls are covered in black paisley wallpaper, offset by heavy golden curtains.
One of my favorite parts is the large bay window at the front of the house, providing a beautiful view of the forest beyond Parsons Manor. Place right in front of it is a red velvet rocking chair with a matching stool. Nana used to sit there and watch the rain, and she said her mother would always do the same.
The checkered tiling extends into the kitchen with beautiful black stained cabinets and marble counter-tops. A massive island sits in the middle with black barstools lining one side. Grandpa and I used to sit there and watch Nana cook, enjoying her humming to herself as she whipped up delicious meals.
There’s eleven mentions of the world black in eight paragraphs and it feels like some parody of what one would expect from an emo teenager. None of the features make me think, ah, it’s beautiful and each of the pieces don’t seem to work with each other. It all just feels like wish fulfillment, which leads us to a new count.
Forcing herself away from the memories, she says that she “[rushes] over” and turns on the light. So…you took the time to monologue at us about how dark and emo your house is but not…turn on the light? That wasn’t the first thing you did? You just wandered through a darkened house?? And why are you rushing over as you say if you were content enough to wander without turning a single light on? She describes how she “[presses her] thumb into the up arrow and [doesn’t] stop until the temperature is set to seventy-four” and that will be the beginning of yet another count—yes, another one within a few paragraphs of each other—where Carlton has to spell everything out for us as if we have no understanding of the world.
Hand Holding: 2 (One for the description of pressing the arrow and the other for the inclusion of how she doesn’t stop until it’s set to her perfect temperature.)
Though it’s funny because she remarks how she actually doesn’t mind cooler temperatures but how she’d “prefer it if [her] nipples didn’t through all of [her] clothing” which is kind of like, yeah, no shit. Who likes having nipples that can cut granite? They hurt after a while, too. I’m going to hold your hand with a tissue when I say this, Addie: You wouldn’t be cold if you’d 1) turn the heat on as soon as you were inside but instead you 2) wandered through the rooms like a fucking specter for no goddamn reason without 3) turning on the lights yet you could see perfectly fine and 4) you haven’t even thought to change out your wet clothes or even made an attempt to dry your hair, either. You’re just asking for a case of pneumonia.
This right here is going to give us a new count—one where Addie makes me wonder if she has a brain or not.
You’re A Moron: 4 (One for each point I just listed above.)
Addie blathers some more about the “gothic glory” of her new-to-her abode and how it’d been her great-grandparents who’d decorated it and how the taste’s been passed down over the years through the family. I…don’t know if taste can be inherited but I’m going to leave it alone because I don’t particularly want to delve into semantics currently. She then questions the throw pillows which are lace-trimmed and embroidered and declares them ugly. I’m totally going to take fashion advice from Little Miss Black Everything.
We’re treated to a time skip and the section break image is a rose. Because of course it is. I wonder if this one has the thorns cut or not…
We find Addie in a bookstore, anxious above this local book signing she’s doing, with her personal assistant we never really see again for the rest of the book asking if she’s ready. While Addie’s assistant Marietta doesn’t get a description, I have a feeling I knowexactly what she looks like, especially considering this book’s shoddy track record with its handling of characters of color and its portrayal of sex trafficking and both its survivors and victims.
The room, in true Bella Swan fashion, goes quiet when she takes the mic and everyone’s watching her, which she says “makes [her] skin crawl” which begs the question why do this then? If she hates book signings, why not limit them to a smaller attendance or, hear me out, omit it altogether and do something else, perhaps online promo and marketing?
You’re A Moron: 8 (A point each for how much she hates it yet continues to do it when there’s plenty of alternatives.)
She’s quick to let us know that it’s not that she’s not excited but so incredibly awkward, and how she’s the “type to stare dead into your face” because she couldn’t hear the question over her heart beat. This all painfully…millennial-coded Quirky & Relatable in a bad way but I can’t prove it. But this gets another two points because it feels like it’s trying too hard to relate to the reader, shoving its relatability into your face.
Marietta disappears exits the book stage right promptly and Addie remarks on how she’s “witnessed [Addie’s] mishaps with readers” and how second-hand embarrassment is one of the downfalls of representing a “social pariah.”
If you’re a successful author, me thinks you aren’t a social pariah. And she’s obviously gotten into the swing of the work enough to not worry about money yet she still calls herself a social pariah? Social pariahs tend not to be famous indie authors.
But I guess if she didn’t do these signings, she wouldn’t cross paths with Zade and he wouldn’t become obsessed, which in turn causes the book to fall apart like a house of cards.
The book signing begins and Addie calls herself and the current reader “Team Freckles” and I’m going to start a count of how many times freckles are mentioned.
As she’s signing books, she says that “pressure settles on [her] face” and concludes someone’s staring at her, then proceeds to say that it’s a “fucking stupid thought” because she’s literally at a book signing. She tries to ignore it and focus on the readers but she says it only grows more intense, akin apparently to “bees buzzing beneath the surface of [her] skin while a torch is being held to [her] flesh” and how it’s so foreign, her hair stands on end and cheeks turn red because she can totally see her own cheeks turn red.
Also which is it—bees under her skin or flame being held close to her?
And then she sees…him. *gasp!* Or, rather, “only bits of his face” that she catches glimpses of through gaps since the crowd’s covering most of him.
This is where the suethor fantasy really kicks in, because you’re telling me the vigilante the government can’t track down (or maybe I’m just making that up) and is supposed to be a shadow of the night is a conventionally attractive man, so much so that Addie pauses in the middle of what she’s doing. Not only that but he has heterochromia which is eye catching on its own and not even two similar colored eyes but one dark and very light blue—two colors that pop together. And a very visible scar down one side of his face, bisecting across his eye. And I already know he’s over six foot with white hair.
Every part of him screams, ‘Look at me!’ instead of, I don’t know, being inconspicuous. People are going to take notice of him, whether he wants them to or not. No amount of growling or threatening is going to make someone forget a face like his.
Which leads us into the newest count, which encompasses all the amateur or suethor-esque writing that makes me question how on Earth it got published—and, even more, is relatively popular—in the first place.
Bad Writing: 4 (For Zade’s entire appearance.)
A reader breaks the moment and when she looks back at where the man was, he’s gone.
We get a section break and I want to die when the first words of it are “Addie, you need to get laid” from arguably my third hated character of this book, Daya. She and Addie are at a bar post-book signing and Addie’s response to this arguably very sexually inappropriate remark is to “slurp [her] blueberry martini as deeply as [her] mouth will allow” and I argue that she could probably suck down a lot more alcohol if she just swallowed the first sip instead of holding it in her cheeks.
I will say I find I did the fact Addie is at a bar refreshing. As much of an introvert as I am, it gets tiring seeing characters who literally just do what I do—go home and unwind—as opposed to a variety of various women with various hobbies. Give me a socialite who thrives off attention and that’s how she decompresses. Give me an activist who spends her time volunteering. Girls who find comfort in sports.
Daya is Addie’s best friend and falls into the Sassy Black Best Friend stereotype, considering after that nightmare of a character’s first lines, Addie says that Daya “eyes [her,] entirelyunimpressed and impatient” and I half expect her to her to start obnoxiously chew gum while her eight kids hang off her arm. Speaking of racism, I’m going to start a count for every instance of characters of color being ill-treated or written badly.
Addie thinks about how she could drink a lot more alcohol if she only had a bigger nose but she keeps quiet because she can “bet [her] left ass cheek” that Daya’s reply would be about giving a man’s large penis oral.
Daya gets up in Addie’s space because that’s totally normal behavior, refusing to let it go because she just really, really, really needs Addie to get laid for…some reason. I hate this trope. Why are you so obsessed with your friend’s sex life? To the point you’re upset she hasn’t been laid as if it’s your own lackluster, lacking sex life.
It’s never the FMC bemoaning that she needs to have sex; in fact, it’s always the best friend being uncomfortably invested in the FMC’s sex life with the FMC often claiming it doesn’t bother her but it does hence the complaining she does, avoiding “Daya’s eyes” and even going so far as needing a full alcoholic drink for this conversation instead of Daya not doing that.
Boundaries? What’re Those?: 5 (One for each instance of them having absolutely no sort of healthy space between them.)
After some laughter that eases tensions, Daya starts in on her when Addie remarks that she “[sucks] at getting laid, too, apparently.” She also has to glaze Addie, as if Zade doesn’t do that enough in his internal dialogue, reiterating how much of a bombshell Addie is to the audience, a “hot twenty-six-year old woman with freckles, a great pair of tits and an ass to die for. The men are out here waiting.”
I hate the obsession with freckles. It feel very innocence-kink-coded, and I can’t prove it, but I know.
Addie knows Daya isn’t wrong, but none of the guys in their town interest her because they’re all so drab and vanilla and self-absorbed.
Which I know will be used to prop Zade up as the world’s best sex when in reality each of those encounters are non-consensual with it being forced onto Addie, with the narrative on both side trying to convince the reader it’s not rape because her vagina was lubricated.
Daya then demands Addie’s phone and ignores a clear, concise response to her inappropriate pushiness: “Fuck, no.” Then she demands it again, angrier, and threatens to publicly embarrass Addie in the middle of a crowded bar and smugly refers to it as essentially getting what she wants regardless of the cost to Addie.This is also manipulative as fuck and Daya’s trampling all over Addie’s boundaries so she caves. Nothing says friendship like an unhealthy obsession with your friend’s sex life, going so far as to sexting a man she complains is a terrible lay every time and has stepped back from. Why him? Are there no other men in her contacts, one that would be a good time for Addie? Why not find a man in the bar? I guess we wouldn’t have yet another way to prop Zade up, because he isn’t vanilla or drab or self-absorbed.
Boundaries? What’re Those: 8
Addie reluctantly does what Daya wants and Daya goes to town, and Addie describes her eyes having “a mischievous glimmer” that’s grows brighter and the “golden rings” on her thumbs are but a streak with her speed. She says that Daya’s “sage green eyes” (yes, it’s written like that) are shining not with mischief or glee, oh, no, they’re alight with a “type of evilness you would only find in Satan’s Bible.” As if that wasn’t enough to tell us how Daya looks right now, she hammers it in by saying you might find a photo of Daya in the book, describing her as a “bombshell with dark brown skin, pin-straight black hair, and a gold hoop in her nose.”
She compares Daya to a succubus, which I especially don’t like in relation to a Black woman because it toes, even in jest, too close to the Jezebel stereotype for me, but it’s also included in the below Bad Writing points.
You also need a hyphen for dark-brown and sage-green unless you meant sage, green but you’d still probably get a point considering it’d need a comma, too.)
It also features a Hand Holding count as well since she just lays it all out for us.
Hand Holding: 8 (One for each line.)
Addie sits there and moans and complains, demanding to know who Daya’s texting. She says that she refrains from stomping her feet like a child. I hate when books compare adult women to children. Then she adds further insult to injury when she claims that she might do something ~~SuPeR cRaZy~~ like showing everyone how well-adjusted and totally not immature she is, which is apparently “throwing a temper tantrum” and how she’s buzzed and feeling “a bit adventurous.” Which doesn’t feel like something someone with “social anxiety” as she’d mentioned a second ago would do as I figured the very last thing I want when I’m experiencing anxiety is drawing attention in any manner, but you do you.
When Daya returns the phone, Addie’s dismayed to see Daya’s sexted a man named Greyson and even “groan[s] aloud” at the sight of Daya’s messages to him, which she reads “dryly” and only complains that they “[don’t] even sound like me.” From the snippet we get, which is “come over tonight and lick my pussy. I’ve been craving your huge cock” and some diatribe about how horny she is and how she touches herself as night, I can’t exactly blame Addie for whatever face she pulls that she’s describe as “making a dumpster look like Mr. Clean’s house,” though I can’t understand the meaning of.
Boundaries? What’re Those?: 12
Her phone chimes with a response from Greyson, which is short and succinct as “be over at 8” which some remark of how it’s “about time [she] came to [her] senses.” Daya presses for Addie to read it to her and Addie has to dangle her phone out of reach and only grumbles about “really fucking hat[ing] [Daya]” while she only grins and relishing Addie’s pain.
Boundaries? What’re Those?: 13
Bad Writing: 17 (Two for each line of Greyson’s text.)
Based on how the next section opens up with Greyson “breathing into [her] neck” and they’re in a hallway while he’s “[humping] her,” we know Addie goes through with casual hook up. Presumably a few hours have passed since they split ways at the bar, which means between the text Daya sent and Greyson’s text, there’s a couple hour gap. Or minutes after, in fact. Because while Daya sent that text from Addie’s phone, the thought of correcting the situation so she doesn’t have to have really crappy sex with a man she doesn’t remotely like never crosses her brain. Why is she having sex with him? I don’t understand why she would follow through on a sexual encounter she didn’t make with a man she doesn’t like for sex that isn’t good.
But why? What’s the point of having lackluster sex with someone you don’t mesh with? It makes no sense. Even though Daya sent the text and she shouldn’t have, Addie made no attempts to cancel it, even after her phone had been returned. She went through with it for what reason?
Addie complains directly to the reader about how the eyes of family portraits feel as if they’re “watching [her]” and how she can feel their “scorn and disappointment.”She also shows how much she really doesn’t like Greyson by saying that if the Grudge showed up, she’d “trip Greyson on the way out” and how she isn’t the least bit “ashamed.”
Addie then shows the lengths she’ll go to avoid being an adult.
He murmurs some more dirty things in my ear while I inspect the sconce hanging above our heads. Greyson said in passing once that he’s scared of spiders. I wonder if I can discreetly reach up, pluck a spider from its web, and put it down the back of Greyson’s shirt.
That would light a fire under his ass to get him out of here, and he’d probably be too embarrassed to talk to me again. Win, win.
Just when I actually go to do it, he rears back, panting from all the solo French kissing he’s been doing with my throat.
Right off the bat, ya’ll.
Boundaries? What’re Those?: 14
Addie really contemplates picking up a bug and setting it loose on Greyson. No, she doesn’t just contemplate—she actually starts to do it. All because she does not want to sleep with this man. Because she can’t do the normal, sane thing and simply cancel on him because she does not want to sleep with him. How does that make any sense?
Even if Daya did text him, pretending to be Addie, Addie herself didn’t have to keep the ruse. She didn’t have to let Greyson in at eight. She didn’t have to let him in at all even. He could’ve shown up and, if she really didn’t want to see him, she could’ve hidden and pretended to not be home. No one is making Addie sleep with Greyson EXCEPT ADDIE HER FUCKING SELF!!!!
And, obviously, by the Greyson’s text, he wasn’t exactly blowing up her phone, either, so it wasn’t like he was harassing her and she felt forced to go along. There’s no one else to blame for this situation save Addie herself. Daya was inappropriate but after the phone was back in Addie’s possession, she had all the time to course correct the situation.
Addie says that she “cringe[s]” physically and mentally and attempts to play it off by pulling her shirt off, telling us while she’s doing it that Greyson’s attention span is that of “a beagle” and how he’s “staring intensely.”
But halt, there’s noise at the front door—“loud banging” that interrupts them, “so [sudden]” and “violently loud” that they share a look. Any tension is interrupted by Carlton holding our hands to the exactly emotion we’re supposed to feel by explaining how “they don’t sound too nice.”
They go check it out and when she checks, Addie describes the from porch as “vacant” and how the night’s “closing in on the manor.” And any possibility of tension’s cut, this time by Greyson opening his mouth and this alone exemplifies why this scene didn’t have to happen. He looks at Addie and asks if “[she’s] gonna answer that” and she “almost [thanks] him” but stops because something about the knock has her instinct, as she tells us, “blaring Code Red.” And then we’re treated to even more hand holding, describing the knock as “aggressive” and how it’d sounded like someone using “all their strength.”
Greyson showcases the exact reason she should get a new best friend or grow a backbone—he’s looking back at her “expectantly” and Addie says “a little like [she’s] stupid,” so she stomps outside. She says the breeze messes with her “cinnamon hair” as she looks around to find…no one there, though she admits the possibility of someone “watching in the woods” and how, despite her love of them, she’s got no desire to “star in [a horror film.]”
Despite all of her fear, she says that she “[isn’t] entirely comfortable” with how the “heavy weight” she’s feeling and storms back into the house, where she doesn’t notice Greyson literally stripping as he plods along behind her until they’re both in her room. I don’t think now’s the time for horiness but what do I know? Well, we have a new count for all that.
It’s also so fucking ridiculous.
But again, I ask, why are you fucking him if he’s such a prick?
Addie and Greyson have an argument, where she laments about chivalry and how he’s such an ass because he didn’t ask her if she was okay and show even a modicum of emotional intelligence. Which begs the question of WHY ARE YOU FUCKING HIM? If he’s so insensitive, why are you letting him slurp your neck like spaghetti and dry-hump you like a dog against the wall? Because Addie truly didn’t have to go along with Daya’s sexting nonsense.
But he gets pissed, and she says that his eyes, like his personality and sex skills, are a “shitty color” and how he gives “fish a run for their money” with how bad he is at sex. Then, as if we didn’t get it the first time, she adds that he “might as well lay out naked in the fish market” and how it’d be a chance for him to “find someone to take him home.”
Again, I ask, WHY ARE YOU SEEING HIM IF YOU HATE HIM!? If we’re to believe Daya—that Addie’s a bombshell with her pick of men—then why is she settling for someone she can’t stand? It makes no sense.
Greyson and Addie fight, she tells him to “get the fuck out [her] house” and she says that his eyes as “slits, brimming with fury” right before he punches a hole in the wall because that’s a very normal, well-adjusted, emotionally mature and well-rounded thing to do.
But only one person rapes and assaults Addie and it isn’t One-Sock Greyson over here but the love interest.
In Hunting Adeline, Zade trashes a hospital room in a fit of rage, and I don’t see much of difference between those two scenes. Both of them lose their cool and lash out, hurting themselves and destroying property in the process. If Greyson were the love interest, would his actions be okay?
Greyson leaves and we don’t see him ever again for the rest of the book because Zade (spoiler alert but not really because Greyson is a nothing character who could be removed and nothing would really change) threatened his life and cut his tongue out to keep him quiet. As if Greyson and Addie don’t live in a small town, where I’m sure he sought medical attention because it’s his tongue and the doctor surely would’ve noticed a man coming in with that peculiar wound.
Addie hopes that the “mysterious person” murders Greyson.
Gigi’s Letter #1 — April 4th, 1944
The letter opens on with Gigi, Adeline’s great-grandmother (AKA Nana’s mom) describing that there’s a “strange man” whose been lurking outside her window, a stranger she goes on to tell us. But she’s convinced he knows her and she relays how he stares “through the window” when she’s alone.
Even though this man is hanging around her house, where her daughter lives with them, she says that she isn’t frightened of the man hurting John but more of the fact that John would “go out with his shotgun and try to find him” and what fate should befall “[her] visitor” that she’s “very afraid of” but also “intrigued” by.
Her diary entry is stamped with a lipstick kiss.
