My Dreadful Darling by H. D. Carlton Book Review

My Dreadful Darling is H. D. Carlton’s newest enemies-to-lovers dark romance set to be a two-part series dubbed the Hollow Graves Duet. Packed with serial killer fathers and dead mothers, a dark academia setting, and gore galore, it’s a fresh take on Carlton’s pitch-black storytelling direction. 

Writing: 3/5
Story: 2/5
Darkness: 3/5
Spice: 5/5
Editing: 5/5

Trigger warnings: Extreme bullying, sexual harassment, noncon/dubcon, lost pregnancy, serial killer murder & gore, and child abuse.

Tropes: Enemies-to-lovers, THAIKY

My Dreadful Darling opens with one of those lines that knocks the wind out of you.

There are a lot of ways my mother could’ve tried to kill me, but I’ve always been grateful she chose a method that left me with only internal scars. That was the first kindness she offered me in life. The last was hanging herself seven months ago.

And the punches keep coming after that.

Reverie Adams (aka Charlotte D’Amour, more on that later) is the daughter of the infamous Locksmith serial killer. Many believe her father to be innocent; Reverie is not one of them. Her father’s last victim was Katherine Sharpe, and it was for her murder that he finally went away. Now Katherine’s lone surviving son, Kellan Sharpe, is out for blood. Or, if not blood, then whatever sick prank he can get away with on campus.

Let’s get something out of the way first: the FMC calling the MMC “Dread” instead of using his real name is corny as heck. If someone terrorized me for years, there’s no way in Hell I’d use the goofy nickname they’d championed for themselves. I’d be calling him Shitdick or something. I’ll try not to harp on it.

While Reverie studies criminal justice, Dread studies her: how to make her hurt, how to get under her skin, how to push her to the brink of destruction. He followed her to Hollow Canyon University and seems determined to pursue her to the ends of the Earth and back. In a few years she can finish her program and leave the country. Until then, she has no choice but to put up with his harassment while the university protects its star swim team asset.

But H. D. Carlton delivers another heroine who can punch back, hard. Reverie drugs Dread with sleeping pills before a big swim meet after he leaves her chained to a flagpole in a snowstorm. The give-and-take is genuinely fun to watch, and every retaliation compounds the “enemies” these two have to overcome to get where we know they’re going.

Carlton also brings her familiar c-plot mechanic. The dark romance burn is center stage, and there’s a “serial killer dad reentering society” subplot smoldering around the edges, plus Reverie admitting, early on, that she sees the ghost of Georgie Farrell, one of her father’s victims.

Carlton continues her habit of making these characters feel real enough to hurt. Reverie has panic attacks around water and has been to therapy for it. Athletes and rich kids get away with atrocities while the administration looks away. Weird old men date college girls half their age. The “dark” in this dark romance comes from reality, which is a big part of why it works, though it never gets weighed down by the muck of the mundane. You’ve also got mothers who tried to drown their children, college students dressing up as murder victims, and melodramatic TV interviews with the gossip to match. It stays salacious. It moves fast.

I do wish she’d retire certain phrases (a “tickle in his pickle” needed to die in the drafting stage), and honestly, I think Carlton’s gotten a little worse as she’s gotten more editorial and more mainstream. The edge on her old prose was honed to a “oh my god, did she just write that?” and now it leans flaccidly on “oh, I’ve heard that one before.” This is also the kind of book where female best friends call each other “bitch” and “whore” lovingly, which will never be to my taste, but it is what it is.

The central conflict is one of those whacky misunderstandings that would resolve in one honest conversation. It’s very 90s-sitcom-chic: two young adults at school, bullying, getting jealous, being horny. Accurate, maybe, but not exactly the maturity the average dark romance reader is hoping to find woven into the story’s cartilage.

Eventually we get one saucy, consensual kiss and the first whisper of what are we anxiety, plus a decent blend of “she’s mine to torture” and “touch her and I’ll kill you” that I didn’t hate. A little backstory leaks out around Reverie and her father, though most of it stays unsaid, and a lot of the incoming twists are pretty obvious; each one just underlines that this whole mess could’ve been avoided with one honest conversation. Dread’s actions are narratively justified. Reverie’s actions are narratively justified. They really just need to hash it out over a drink. Instead they fight, and we watch them fight for about five chapters too many, waiting for the (ahem) climax.

The tension finally peaks when bullying turns to kidnapping and kidnapping shifts into coercive sex. But who doesn’t love a good trigger warning read. It’s not as dark or problematic as Carlton’s better-known work: they know each other, they want each other, and they actually have mature conversations about birth control and STIs before things get going. It’s dubcon, but forgivable. There’s a genuinely great scene where Dread goes down on Reverie for the first time anyone’s done that for her (maybe one of the better scenes Carlton’s ever written).

We also get some forced proximity, one of my favorite tropes, made better by the fact that these two are up against a serial killer, another favorite flavor of mine. And then we unlock the “can fuck anytime they want” era of the relationship, which is a relief after all that buildup. Like a lot of good dark romance books, the plot softens here to make room for the sex, and the serial-killer-dad plot takes a back seat to page after page of carnal desire. Honestly, fine by me.

That’s where the book was working. That’s also roughly where it stopped.

From here it feels like fluff and self-indulgence: a sex tape scandal, people finding out about Reverie and Dread, and the slowest possible drip of serial-killer-dad lore. Reverie runs away, Dread chases her, dramatics ensue, and some of the cringiest dialogue known to mankind gets spoken ad nauseam. My eye sockets still hurt. We do finally get a phone call between Reverie and her dad, which was a long time coming (he’s supposed to be the plot, but he’s a faceless boogeyman for two-thirds of the book, and not a particularly scary one). Reverie owns up to a pointed moment in her past that stirs up drama with Dread, cueing the obligatory “will they break up for good?” beat that shows up in half of dark romance and rarely convinces anyone.

There’s also a lot of filler near the end: adult babysitting, painfully cringy banter, talk about dick piercings. Dread teaches Reverie to swim, and water becomes a metaphor for controlling your inner demons so they serve you, I guess? Or overcoming anxiety, or something: a mixed metaphor at best. We get Reverie’s praise kink. A reporter tests her luck with Dread by bringing up his mother. I started skimming for relevant blocks at this point. The short version: Reverie pieces it together, and it all leads back to needing to reunite with her serial killer father, or else more women die as her “punishment.” She’s also been practicing holding her breath (up to one hundred and ninety-two seconds now), and you just know that’s going to matter for the climax somehow.

Then we hit the endgame, and I expected things to start moving. Reverie gets an unmissable warning from her father, which should set the climax in motion. Except, just kidding, she gets mad at Dread some more instead of taking any real action. Back to the cringe banter and melodramatic will-they-won’t-theys. Meanwhile, somewhere off to the side, some girl’s bloody eyeballs turn up in a box. But whatever: Dread drama comes first. Always.

With two chapters left, nothing is happening, and I started genuinely wondering if this was going to be a cliffhanger. An undeserved one, at that. The second-to-last chapter is nothing but deep talks rehashing stuff we’ve already covered elsewhere: sad boy this, tortured girl that, a sprinkle of star-crossed love, while a serial killer has ostensibly been on their heels for months. Dread admits he’s been stalking her for some time; but, duh, we can tell. The final chapter has Reverie making a new friend for four pages straight. Huh?

I gave this book the benefit of the doubt right up to the end, but here’s the truth: there is no climax, and there’s barely any conflict. The big tease (a serial killer father taunting his terrified daughter) turns out to be a red herring for high-school-level love drama. Everything good about the plot is a tease for the second book, and there’s nothing about My Dreadful Darling that earns it being a self-contained story. It’s one-third of a story. It’s the concept of a plan.

Will the sequel deliver the two-thirds of the plot and narrative structure that’s missing here? Doesn’t matter: I paid full price for this book, and now I’m mad.

Say what you will about Haunting Adeline, but that first book had a solid beginning, middle, and end. The cliffhanger was flavor, not the whole premise. It drew you into a compelling part two with tantalizing threads everywhere, just waiting to be tugged. But the read itself was satisfying. Stuff happened. Things wrapped up.

My Dreadful Darling is a prologue to the story actually being told. It doesn’t need to be its own book, and making it one feels like a cash grab at this point. And, spoilers: the cliffhanger sucks.

The entire book is a Chekhov’s gun; except the gun is a serial killer dad.

Related read: Haunting Adeline is Getting It’s Own Graphic Novel

My Dreadful Darling vibe quotes: 

Every single atom in my body comes to a screeching halt. If my body housed Earth itself, it would be spiraling into absolute chaos. Cells crashing into one another like cars before bursting into flames. My blood freezing into solid ice and trapping cells within its glaciers. My organs powering down and falling from the sky like airplanes. – Prologue 

I can survive this. I’ve survived under the roof of a monster, and I’m surviving under the reign of another. – Ch 1

He wants to break me, but I won’t let him. I didn’t survive all these years for nothing. – Ch 2 

Pale blue tints her skin, and her mouth has taken on a purple hue. They’re usually a deep, rosy pink, but I think I like the look of death on her more. It’s so fucking pretty, and it’s unfortunate it can’t stay. – Ch 3

He’s not going to just… let me go. That much, I’m sure of. – Ch 4

“Don’t run too far, darling. I’d hate to give you a reason to come crawling back.” – Ch 6

“If you were nothing, how could I watch you break?” – Ch 7

He’s been tormenting me for years, and kissing me is the absolute lowest he’s ever gone. He doesn’t get to treat me like absolute shit and then shove his tongue down my throat… – Ch 10

I’m just so tired. It’s as if Earth’s gravity has strengthened, weighing my bones down. I want nothing more than to give in to it, collapse to the floor, and curl up like a crumpled piece of paper. – Ch 11 

He’s not a safe place, but right now, I cling to him like he’s my oxygen. – Ch 13 

I think I scream his name, but I also think I’m shattering into tiny pieces, and it could just be the sound of them hitting the floor. – Ch 19

Craving someone who thrives on your misery is a feeling worse than pure agony. Especially because you can’t help but invite it in when it comes back for more. – Ch 21 

If I’m the little violin, then he’s nothing more than a man with a natural talent for plucking my strings. But he’s no prodigy willing to give up his life to devote himself to me, and I deserve more than to collect dust until he gets the urge to stroke me again. – Ch 26 

There will never be anything pure or loving between us. We will never have a happy ending. Our agony is carved too deeply into the crevices between our bodies, and it will always keep us apart. – Ch 26

Read more dark romance love quotes here.