49 pages • 1-hour read
Chasing Love
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Background
Series Context: Dark Love Series
Chasing Love: A Billionaire Love Triangle is the first novel in Kat T. Masen’s Dark Love Series. The novel is followed by the titles Chasing Us: A Second Chance Love Triangle, Chasing Her: A Stalker Romance, Chasing Him: A Forbidden Second Chance Romance, Chasing Fate: An Enemies-to-Lovers Romance, and Chasing Heartbreak: A Friends-to-Lovers Romance.
Chasing Love introduces the primary characters, conflicts, and stakes of the overarching Dark Love universe. The title is a second chance romance, which also uses the best-friend’s-brother, forbidden love, and secret love affair dark romance tropes. Nine years prior to the novel’s narrative present, 18-year-old Charlie Mason and 25-year-old Lex Edwards fell in love. There was only one problem: Lex was married to Samantha Benson. After Lex abandoned Charlie to support Samantha when she became pregnant, Charlie was left reeling. Nine years later, Charlie is still trying to overcome her heartbreak. The former lovers reunite in New York by chance, reigniting their tumultuous, passionate relationship.
Chasing Us picks up where Chasing Love leaves off. Immediately after Charlie and Lex get married, Charlie discovers that Lex has been in a secret relationship with his client Victoria Preston. Charlie and Lex try to make up in the series’ second book, but Charlie’s “scorned ex-fiancé” Julian Baker resurfaces in an attempt “to claim back what was his” (“Dark Love Series.” Kat T. Masen). Julian’s reappearance compromises Charlie and Lex’s future.
Chasing Her focuses on Julian’s story as he attempts to rekindle his love affair with Charlie while overcoming his dark past. Chasing Him traces Julian and Adriana Edwards’s unexpected love affair. Lex’s hatred for Julian threatens their happiness. Chasing Fate traces Charlie’s cousin Noah Mason’s unlikely friendship with Lex’s assistant and Charlie’s close friend Kate. Kate bets Noah to get involved with a Hollywood star, raising questions about soul mates and romantic fate. Noah’s story continues in the series’ final title, Chasing Heartbreak, which depicts his relationship with an ex-girlfriend.
All the novels in the Dark Love series are dark romance novels. The tropes and themes at the heart of Chasing Love recur in the subsequent novels. Each title follows a distinct romantic entanglement, but all the characters are entangled in one another’s lives.
Genre Context: Dark Romance
Chasing Love is a dark romance novel. Dark romance is a sub-genre of the contemporary romance genre. Books under this classification “often explore darker themes, like abuse, captivity, and dubious consent” (Keys, Emily. “Defining Dark Romance.” The Romance Genre Specialist). Dark romance novels place “trauma and suffering” at the forefront of the narrative, rather than embedding it within the characters’ backstories—as is often the case in more conventional romance novels. Dark romance titles also feature “morally grey, frighteningly complex, possessive” characters. The romantic counterparts are often willing to go to extreme lengths to be with the person they love. Their unlikable qualities—including aggression, dominance, and obsession—intensify the narrative mood and stakes.
Dark romance novels also feature instances of revenge, jealousy, anger, deception, lies, and secrecy. These narrative elements also heighten the narrative mood and complicate the primary lovers’ ability to be together.
In Chasing Love, Charlie and Lex are engaged in a forbidden romance defined by lust, envy, and deceit. In the past, they had to hide their relationship so Lex’s wife Samantha wouldn’t discover them. In the present, they hide their relationship so as not to betray Charlie’s fiancé, Julian Baker. Meanwhile, the characters are haunted by their tumultuous pasts, their fear of abandonment, and the hurt they’ve caused one another over the years. These dynamics create a dangerous, high-tension narrative world, where no one can be trusted. The author leans into the dark romance tropes to satisfy readers’ expectations, framing Love as a Battle for Power and Attraction as a Threat to Identity.
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