Silhouette by Carin Hart

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Don’t look out your window—because you might not like what you see…Simone
I can’t escape him.

I thought I did. When I slipped off one night, leaving everything in my old life behind, I was ready to sacrifice it all if only to leave him behind, too.

But, like always, my ex chases after me. That’s what he does, after all. Holding to the vows I was too young and naive to understand, William Burke will have me ’til death do us part.

And then, almost immediately, it does—when Will is slaughtered in a back alley.

He haunts my dreams. Stars in my nightmares. I see him everywhere, hear his voice in my head. I look out my window and he’s there. Even dead, I can’t escape him…

And that’s when I look out my window and realize that it isn’t Will watching me from the shadows.

It’s another man. A stranger.

A silhouette.

And a killer.

Because he’s not just watching me. He wants me more than Will did… enough that he’ll kill for me.

Stalk me.

Take me.

And I kind of want him to…

Jake
They say the third time’s the charm—and whoever they are, they better be right.

I lost Casey. Heather… that was a tragedy.

And now I want Simone.

I refuse to give up on Simone.

So she wears another man’s ring. He torments her, and she’s in need of a hero.

I can be that for her—I can be anything for her—but when she doesn’t seem quite that impressed with my gift, I realize I need to get to know my sweet vixen a little better before I make her mine.

And that’s exactly what I do. From infiltrating her life to sneaking into her house, I’m here, I’m there, I’m everywhere… and she can’t escape me.

More importantly, by the time I’ve done everything I can to convince her there’s no one better for her than me, she won’t want to…

Do you know what’s more dangerous than the shadows outside your door?
When he gets tired of watching—and let’s himself inside…

Silhouette

Red Roses, Red Flags, and a Man Who Won’t Look Away

The following ratings are out of 5:
Romance: 💙💛💚
Spice: 🌶️🌶️🌶️🌶️
Chemistry: 🧪🧪🧪
Story/Plot: 📕📗📘
World building: 🌏🌍🌎🌏
Character development: 😋🙂😁
Narrator(s): 🎙🎙🎙
Narration type: Dual Narration

Character Backgrounds and Plot Summary

Simone Burke opens this book already running. She left her husband William Burke behind, a man she married too young to understand what she was agreeing to, and just when she thinks she is finally free of him, he turns up dead in a back alley. You would think that’s the end of her nightmare, but it isn’t. Will still haunts her dreams, and then one night she looks out her window and realizes the shape watching her from the shadows isn’t a memory of Will at all.

It’s someone new. That’s Jake McIntyre, and he tells us straight up that Simone isn’t his first obsession. He lost a woman named Casey, and Heather ended in what he only calls a tragedy, so by the time he sets his sights on Simone he’s decided the third time has to work. He doesn’t just admire her from a distance either. He inserts himself into her actual life, learns her favorite color, leaves her roses in that exact shade, and works his way from stranger to fixture without her fully clocking what’s happening until it’s too late to just walk away.

Highlights and Limitations

What stuck with me most was how much Jake pays attention. The rose detail got me, honestly, because it’s such a small thing but it tells you everything about how closely he’s been watching her before she ever knew his name. There’s also a scene where Simone practically dares him, saying something like he hasn’t even proposed to her yet, and he drops to one knee like he’s been waiting for the invitation the entire time. It’s unsettling and a little thrilling at once, which is exactly the tightrope a good stalker romance needs to walk.

I also have to give credit for the twist. I did not see it coming, and I actually paused the audiobook for a second to process it because it recontextualizes some of what came before it in a way that made me like the pairing more, not less.

Where I wished the book had done more was with Will. His murder kicks off the entire plot, and Simone spends a good chunk of the story still processing what he did to her during their marriage, but I wanted a little more time sitting with that grief and fear before Jake fully took over the narrative. It felt like the story was so eager to get Jake on the page that Simone’s own reckoning with her past got a bit rushed. I also would have liked a scene or two more from Simone’s perspective in the back half, since Jake’s chapters started to dominate once he moved from watching her to actively being in her life.

Narration

This is where the audiobook really splits for me. Alexa Borys voices Simone and does a solid job overall, though there were a few stretches where her delivery flattened out and I wanted more emotional urgency, especially in moments where Simone should have sounded more rattled by what’s happening to her.

Cole Eubanks as Jake is the bigger issue. His pacing is choppy in a way that doesn’t read as intentional menace so much as it reads as hesitant, with odd pauses breaking up lines that should flow. I wanted Jake to sound smooth and controlled, since that’s what makes an obsessive character genuinely creepy, and instead some of his scenes came across stilted rather than sinister. It pulled me out of moments that should have hit harder, particularly early on before I’d adjusted to his rhythm.

Final Opinion

I still enjoyed this one, twist and all, and I think Jake earns his spot among the more memorable obsessive love interests in this genre thanks to how deliberate his courtship of Simone is. The rose gesture alone tells you this isn’t a man who improvises, and that kind of calculated devotion is what makes dark romance work when it’s done well.

My honest reaction is that I wanted the audio performance to match the intensity of the writing, and it didn’t always get there for me, particularly on Jake’s side. If you can push through some of the narration’s rougher patches, the story itself delivers a satisfying HEA and a twist that genuinely surprised me. I’d recommend it to anyone who likes their romance a little dangerous, just maybe read this one in text if narration consistency matters a lot to you.

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