Hunting Adeline

The Cat & Mouse Duet is a series of two novels by H. D. Carlton: Haunting Adeline and Hunting Adeline, and the story is also supplemented by two additional spinoff novels, Where’s Molly and Satan’s Affair, which address the abuses suffered by secondary characters Molly and Sibby. In the primary storyline of Haunting Adeline, Adeline investigates the ghosts of Parsons Manor, the estate that she inherited from her late grandmother, Serafina. There, she learns more about the life of her great-grandmother, Gigi, who once had an affair with her stalker, Ronaldo. Adeline also sees distinct parallels between Gigi’s life and her own when she discovers that someone is stalking her—a man eventually identified as Zade Meadows. In Carlton’s adherence to the nonstandard “norms” of the dark romance genre, Zade sexually assaults Adeline but frames this action as an attempt to convince her to love him: a tactic that eventually succeeds. 

Despite Zade’s abuse, Adeline gradually falls in love with him and learns that he is also struggling to fight the Society, an evil group of human traffickers operating within a shadow government that controls every aspect of mainstream life. Zade and Adeline join forces to investigate Mark Williams, a senator involved in the Society. Mark just happens to be Gigi’s son—the product of her liaison with her husband’s best friend, Frank Williams. When Zade kills Mark Williams, he believes that he has successfully saved Adeline from the Society’s clutches. However, Claire Williams, Mark’s wife, is also a leader in the Society, and she orders Adeline’s kidnapping by human traffickers and foils Zade’s attempt to interrupt a deadly Society ritual. This conclusion sparks the chain of events featured in the sequel, Hunting Adeline, when Adeline must survive her captivity while Zade works frantically to find and rescue her.

In addition to the Cat & Mouse Duet, Carlton has written two other novels in the series: Where’s Molly and Satan’s Affair. Where’s Molly, the more recent addition, features Molly Devereaux, who was separated from her baby sister Layla and sold into trafficking by her parents, who sought to fund their drug addiction. In Hunting Adeline, Adeline finds Molly’s journal in Francesca’s house and gains hope from the woman’s escape efforts. Where’s Molly details how Molly was kidnapped by human traffickers and “trained” in Francesca’s house, ultimately escaping with the help of a henchman named Rio. Molly then goes on to save Layla. 

The events of Satan’s Affair are interwoven throughout the timeline of the Cat & Mouse Duet. This novel explores Sibby’s life before she meets Zade, and it also details the events that occur between Mark Williams’s death and Sibby’s reunion with Zade. The novel explains how Sibby grew up in a cult run by her father, Leonard. In her bid for escape, she kills her father, effectively destroying the cult. To cope with the psychological damage of her experience, Sibby conjures a group of imaginary “henchmen” as company. After meeting Zade and killing Mark Williams, Sibby gets arrested and is imprisoned in a specialized facility for treating mental illness. Sibby eventually kills her therapist and escapes, after which she rejoins Zade in Hunting Adeline.