Books like Haunting Adeline

Butcher & Blackbird takes the serial-killer-romance concept and injects it with pitch-black humor that Haunting Adeline readers will either love or find disorienting in the best way. Brynne Weaver's novel follows two rival serial killers who only target other killers, and their competitive relationship evolves from mutual fascination into something genuinely tender. The book matches Haunting Adeline's willingness to build a love story around characters who operate completely outside moral norms, but Weaver's tone is lighter and funnier, which makes the dark subject matter hit differently.

Both books feature male leads who are dangerous, skilled, and fixated on one woman, but where Zade operates in the shadows, Rowan is openly chaotic. The banter between the leads crackles with the same energy as Addie and Zade's early confrontations. Readers who liked the cat-and-mouse dynamic of Haunting Adeline but want a version where both parties are equally lethal will find this addictive.

The heat level matches Carlton's, and the plot moves fast enough that the 400-page count disappears.

Den of Vipers drops its heroine into a situation even more extreme than Addie's and lets her claw her way to power within it. K.V. Rose's novel follows Lilith, who is kidnapped by a group of dangerous men known as the Vipers as payment for her father's debt.

The power dynamics here are rawer and more overtly dangerous than in Haunting Adeline, with Lilith facing multiple antagonists rather than a single obsessive love interest. Both books share a refusal to sanitize their dark elements, and both feature heroines who discover strength they did not know they had when pushed past every limit. The writing is visceral and unapologetic, matching Carlton's willingness to go where most romance authors will not. Den of Vipers operates as a reverse-harem dark romance, which gives it a different structural feel than Haunting Adeline's focused pairing, but the intensity level is comparable.

Readers who finished Haunting Adeline wanting something even darker and more extreme will find exactly that here. This is not a book for the faint-hearted, which is precisely the point.

God of Malice takes the obsessive, possessive love interest archetype that made Zade so polarizing and builds an entire dark academia world around it. Rina Kent's novel follows Killian, a psychology student with no empathy who becomes fixated on Glyndon, a quiet art student at a prestigious university. The setting shifts Haunting Adeline's gothic house for university halls, but the core dynamic is the same: a dangerous man who decides a woman belongs to him and pursues her with single-minded intensity.

Kent's writing is more clipped and fast-paced than Carlton's, which gives the book a thriller-like momentum. Both novels weave a larger conspiracy plot through the romance, using mystery and danger to raise the stakes beyond the relationship itself. The dark academia setting adds an intellectual layer that Haunting Adeline's gothic elements achieve through atmosphere.

God of Malice works as a standalone but fits into Kent's larger universe, which gives readers who want more an extensive backlist to work through. This is the recommendation for readers who specifically loved Zade's intensity and want a love interest cut from the same cloth.

There Are No Saints does something Haunting Adeline fans will appreciate: it takes a genuinely terrifying male lead and makes readers root for him anyway. Sophie Lark's novel follows Cole Blackwell, an artist and convicted murderer, and Mara, a woman who becomes tangled in his world when she witnesses something she should not have. The moral ambiguity here is even sharper than in Haunting Adeline, because Cole does not have Zade's vigilante justification for his violence.

Lark forces readers to sit with their own reactions to a character who is simultaneously threatening and magnetic. Both books use suspense plotting to drive the romance forward, creating situations where proximity to danger becomes indistinguishable from attraction. The writing is atmospheric and visual, with Lark's background in art giving the descriptive passages a painterly quality that contrasts with the brutality of the plot.

There Are No Saints is part of a duet, and the second book pays off the tension established here. Readers who want to test how far they will follow an anti-hero should start with this one.

Corrupt brings the organized-crime energy of Haunting Adeline's hacker underworld into a revenge-fueled romance set among wealthy elites. Penelope Douglas's novel follows Michael Crist, the golden boy of a powerful family, and his dark obsession with the girl next door, Rika. The book operates on a slower burn than Haunting Adeline, spending more time building its ensemble cast and the power dynamics between its characters.

Both novels share a fascination with control and the way it shifts between characters as the story progresses. Douglas is a master of tension and delayed gratification, making readers wait for confrontations that Carlton delivers more quickly. The Devil's Night series, which Corrupt begins, builds a world of masked figures and secret societies that scratches the same itch as Haunting Adeline's shadowy organizations.

The writing is polished and confident, with Douglas managing multiple timelines and perspectives without losing narrative momentum. Readers who want their dark romance embedded in a larger world with recurring characters and escalating stakes will find this series addictive from the first chapter.

Does It Hurt is H.D. Carlton's own follow-up (written under the same pen name energy), and it delivers a different flavor of dangerous romance that still feels distinctly hers. The story follows Sawyer, a woman running from her past, and Enzo, a sharp-tongued marine biologist, who end up stranded together in an abandoned lighthouse during a storm.

Carlton strips away the technology and conspiracy elements of Haunting Adeline and replaces them with isolation and forced proximity, proving she can generate the same intensity with just two people and a crumbling building. The banter between Sawyer and Enzo has more bite than Addie and Zade's exchanges, and the power dynamic shifts more frequently. Both books share Carlton's signature ability to write heat that feels dangerous rather than decorative, and both build genuine suspense around their settings. The lighthouse becomes as much a character as the grandmother's house in Haunting Adeline.

Readers who loved Carlton's voice and want to see what she does with a completely different setup will not be disappointed. The isolation adds a claustrophobic tension that makes every interaction feel amplified.

Credence is the sleeper pick on this list, a dark romance set in a remote Colorado mountain cabin that replaces Haunting Adeline's urban paranoia with wilderness isolation. Penelope Douglas's standalone follows Tiernan, a young woman reeling from her parents' deaths, who is sent to live with her father's stepbrother and his two sons in the mountains. The remoteness of the setting creates a pressure cooker that mirrors the claustrophobic atmosphere of Addie's haunted house.

Douglas handles the taboo elements with the same unflinching directness that Carlton brings to Haunting Adeline, never apologizing for the story she wants to tell. Both books feature heroines who discover their own strength and desire in situations that would break weaker characters. The mountain setting gives Credence a different sensory palette, all snow and pine and firelight, but the emotional intensity matches anything in Haunting Adeline.

Douglas's prose is more restrained than Carlton's, but her plotting is tighter, and she manages the shift from tension to tenderness with skill. This recommendation is for readers who want that same boundary-pushing energy in a completely different environment.