48 pages • 1 hour read
Tourist Season
A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Background
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of sexual content, graphic violence, and death.
Genre Context: Dark Romance Thriller
Tourist Season falls under multiple genre categorizations. It is a work of contemporary romantic fiction that embraces elements of dark romance, but it can also be labeled as a thriller narrative. Works of dark romance “often explore darker themes, like abuse, captivity, and dubious consent. Dark romances don’t pull punches, either; many put trauma and suffering on the page,” rather than incorporating such elements into the characters’ backstories (Keys, Emily. “Defining Dark Romance.” The Romance Genre Specialist, 19 Jul. 2024). Such novels derive their central conflicts from narrative elements including violence, deception, betrayal, and rivalry.
Tourist Season is an enemies-to-lovers romance. This trope creates tension between the romantic counterparts, Harper Starling and Nolan Rhodes. Both of the characters are violent killers attempting to overcome their dark pasts by adopting the personas of the very people who have abused them. Their relationship is founded on hatred and obsession, as they both enter into a relationship with lies and secrets. These aspects of their dynamic create narrative tension and heighten the stakes of their complex intimacy.
