There is a lot to unpack here.

This book contains so many triggers, so before reading PLEASE consider them all. I understand why some readers find it extremely difficult and even DNFed it.

The reason why I personally find the book a "4 ⭐" interesting is the physiological approach and understanding of both FMC and MMC. Although most readers will describe the book as a dark romance or even a smut book, I find it more almost like a textbook for a lot of neurodivergent personalities, and mental issues. From the sociological and anthropological side, I'm impressed with the way the author described social media and the false perception it offers to society (and mostly to teens and young adults).

I will continue reading the series as I'm wondering if the author will continue with the same approach (discussing mental health as one of the most important issues of modern society).

1.5 ⭐️ because I did finish the book unfortunately. Just wanted to leave a few thoughts. 1. I have never seen the word neurotypical used as a repeated insult before which I found hilarious. 2. Why does this take place in the UK? Like it doesn’t make sense. I actually kept forgetting it’s supposed to take place in the UK and then would randomly remember when Glyndon would randomly say “blimey”. It just seemed pointless. 3. Glyndon is literally dumb af. Like she reminds me of that one girl from Love Island UK that asks if Essex is a country. 

The writing was just straight up sloppy. Story was aight. Spice was spicing. 

The story is interesting, both the subplot and the romance. The characters are intriguing. But the dialogue and internal monologues are definitely... Chunky. While the dialogue works in some places with the more analytical and darker characters, it sometimes comes off artificial and odd with the softer characters.

DISCLAIMER: I'm not against dubcon or noncon stories, however I am VERY against romanticising abuse and rape in any way. That's not dark romance, that's kink erotica, and I don't endorse miscategorising a book to try and make more money.

This book is SO badly written it actually hurts my eyes. I can't believe this was sold as dark academia yet not a single academic plotline was written. Small treasures like "your lips look great with my c*** wrapped around them" (yeah, read that again) or "I didn't have any homemade meals since leaving home" while actually eating a homemade meal... all I'm gonna say is I now understand why it takes Rina Kent a month to write a book: because they're actually trash.

I'm gonna get this out of the way and say I'm pretty sure this woman is neither 33 years old nor british; first, every single word in the book is written in american spelling and slang, plus there's a HUGE american presence for absolutely no reason, but the most important thing here is I'm CONVINCED this was written by a teenager.

First of all, she has NO idea how a university works, and she speaks of it in terms painfully similar to a high school (skipping grades, not knowing how a campus is structured or what it's realistic for a university to offer, etc). Second, I refuse to believe someone could intentionally base a MAFIA DARK ROMANCE NOVEL on 19 YEAR OLD CHARACTERS, unless that someone was like 15 and saw 19 year olds as full on adults. Which I think is what's happening here.

On one hand we have the FMC, Glyndon (names are ATROCIOUS in this book) who is an artsy wattpad cliché girl, just as every girl in this story (they're all also virgins - again, teenager behaviour). Obviously Glyndon has no personality, but alas.

And then there's Killian, who is our psycopath for today. I want to stress a few things about him: it's constantly stated that he's a genius and "skipped grades", which again, is not a thing, and he is the most arrogant, insufferable, narcissistic man I've ever had to read, ever. Just thinking about this being a 19 year old makes me cringe at his every word and I just want to slap him across the face. He's literally a rich kid in need of someone just kicking him on the mouth. Plus, I don't know how someone can be THIS bad in bed AND boast so much about it.

This book starts with full on oral rape. I know both the author and some reviewers insist this is "dubious consent", but if you've EVER read dubcon and noncon fanfiction you know EXACTLY in which category this falls, and that's not dubcon. I didn't appreciate how Killian keeps being annoying and stating he doesn't care what Glyndon wants and he's gonna keep raping her if he wants to, yet we're told this is a romance and she falls for him. I also didn't appreciate how halfway through the book the author tried to excuse every man's behaviour in this series by basically giving every single girl in the book a secret rape fantasy, even after we saw Glyndon say she did NOT want it, and constantly appealing to the "oh but she is wet so she must want it" argument - just disgusting behaviour and a complete disrespect toward very real rape victims. Could you imagine if a man wrote those words continuously in his book? Yeah, no.

Finally we have the rest of the characters, which again, horribly written. Most of them are NPCs, there's a russian one who loves Tchaikovsky and whose family is in the Bratva (you get where I'm going with this) and there's this weird "school god" (every single man in this book is a school god, btw) who women are supposed to be fawning over but he is supposed to talk about himself in THE THIRD PERSON and call himself MY LORDSHIP (let's be FOR REAL FOR A MINUTE). Anyway Rina does not seem to know what the third person is since she didn't use it a single time in any of this guy's dialogues. Perhaps they haven't covered third person yet in her class.

Plot wise, there really isn't one. 

I'll finish this review by stating that I didn't think there could be a worse book than Haunting Adeline on God's green Earth and I am now very unhappy to have been proven wrong.

This was my first dark romance. I usually read fantasy and dark fantasy. 

I really liked this book. It had so much of what I was looking for like an unhinged, burn the world down, obsessed mmc. Killian is everything I look for in an mmc. I was here for it. 

Part of me missed the fantasy elements that I am used to. Although the books was fast paced, sexy, and mysterious I find myself drawn more to fantasy dark romance where something else is also driving the plot. 

The relationship was done very well, but the end of the book felt rushed for the relationship. However I understand this is a standalone and everything needs to be wrapped up in one book. 

Three things that knocked down my rating

the FMC keeps saying she wont give herself to the mmc completly and then just does near the end. Yes stuff happened to move this along but it did not feel like their was enough internal monologue to understand her change in behavior. The mystery and person not being dead felt so rushed and we don’t even get a scene of Lan and Killian taking revenge for Glyndon. It felt like the book needed like 50 more pages to wrap both the love story and the revenge plot up. Finally why the Devlin guy faked his own death was only briefly explained and did not really make sense. The reasons he gave could have been accomplished by him not faking his own death. Again just a few more pages could have helped.

Anyway, despite some criticisms, I really enjoyed it. And although I prefer fantasy dark romance I will continue with the next standalone. 

Overall: 4.25/5 ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️💫
Spice: 4/5 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️

Mostly because Kent starts off with sexual assault with no trigger warning. Absolutely awful.

I didn’t think I would love this book as much as I did but it was so goood, it was funny, Killian is my man and his and Glyn’s banter was amazing I was eating it up. 
I think I’m diving back into my dark romance phase and I can’t help it (but I love it). 
It would have been a 5 stars if not for that first chapter that I wasn’t expecting and obviously it threw me off a little. 
I can’t wait to read the next one and dive into another love story between these friend groups.

God awful dialogue. No one speaks like that, especially not supposedly gifted college students. It was cringe. Sounded like it was written by a 14-year-old on Wattpad. Trash writing. Sexual assault and blackmail right at the beginning of the novel, but it's ok, because he's "hot".  It wasn't con/non-con. It was just non-consensual. Period.