My Dreadful Darling By H.D Carlton
My Dreadful Darling by H.D Carlton - Book 1 in the Hollow Graves Duet
Tropes: Dark Romance, Dark College Romance, Enemies to Lovers, Revenge, Tormentor Hero, Serial Killer Legacy, Morally Grey MMC, Haunted Past, Duet, Ends on a Cliffhanger
Summary:
My Dreadful Darling is the first book in H.D Carlton's Hollow Graves duet, and it is exactly the kind of dark, twisted, deeply unwell story the Cat and Mouse girlies have been waiting for. Two college seniors, both shaped by the same serial killer, one as his daughter and one as the son of his victim.
BOOK REVIEW
The wait for this one was long and the expectations were completely unhinged, and I'm pleased to report it mostly earns them. H.D Carlton returning to dark romance was always going to be an event. The only real question was whether anything could survive that much anticipation.
Reverie is the reason it works for me. She is carrying her father's legacy, a whole town that has already decided what she must be underneath, and she does not spend this book being quietly destroyed by any of it. She fights. She's sharp, she's difficult, she hands back exactly what she's given, and I have very little patience for heroines who simply absorb what's done to them, so this was a genuine relief.
And Dread is an actual enemy, which is rarer in enemies to lovers than it has any right to be. Not a man who scowls for forty pages and then goes soft, but someone who has organised his entire existence around making her suffer and fully intends to see it through. The hatred between them has real weight, and because it has weight the tension is close to unbearable. The banter is filthy. The push and pull is deranged in exactly the way I show up for.
If I have a reservation, it's tonal. Haunting Adeline was frightening in a way this isn't quite. Strip the premise back and you have two university students tormenting each other over something one honest conversation could have resolved, and there are stretches where it tips more chaotic than genuinely menacing. The plot also gives up a bit of ground in the back half to make room for everything else going on between them.
None of which stopped me. This is a duet and it ends precisely where you're dreading it will. Read the content warnings properly first. Carlton has never once done gentle and she isn't starting now.
“My darling, it is you who is dreadful.”
H.D Carlton is back and she brought a whole new way to ruin your life. If Haunting Adeline made you feral, My Dreadful Darling will do it again with a fresh set of demons: a heroine drowning in a legacy she never chose, a tormentor who has built his entire existence around making her pay, and a truth neither of them is ready for. Dark, obsessive, and evil for ending where it does.
