48 pages • 1-hour read
Tourist Season
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Themes
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, sexual content, and death.
The Importance of Resolving the Past for Self-Reinvention
The novel’s Cape Carnage backdrop offers the protagonist, Harper Starling, the illusion of change, growth, and personal choice. After Harper escapes her kidnapper, Harvey Mead, she flees her old life, adopts a stolen identity, and relocates to a small coastal town in Maine. She does everything in her power to disassociate from her past life and identity out of self-preservation. The facade she is hiding behind is her “first line of defense” against “the past that trails behind” her (35). Harper has chosen this new life in Carnage in hopes of transcending her dark personal history. Harper lost her parents when she was a child; then she and her boyfriend, Adam, were kidnapped years later, and Adam was murdered. Harper is tired of identifying with these painful experiences and is desperate for her new small-town life to liberate her through the opportunity to reinvent herself. However, the novel uses her example to illustrate how the reinvention of oneself cannot truly happen until one deals with the effects of the past.
The narrative uses its Cape Carnage setting as a metaphor for the individual’s complex psyche, and it illustrates the gap between the surface and what lies beneath. Like the town itself, Harper appears to be a nice young woman with a friendly face and a “can-do” attitude. No one suspects that she was a kidnapping victim or that she is a murderer; as Harper comments, “[W]hat’s so great about Carnage” is that it’s “unapologetically weird” (241). Harper fits in well in this quirky community because the townspeople excuse her idiosyncrasies. Her strong bond with the secret serial killer Arthur Lancaster preserves her positive persona in the town, but “Harper Starling [is] not who she says she is” (369). Much like Harper, Carnage has its own dark underbelly. The town’s history is defined by random disappearances, murders, violence, and gore. While it looks idyllic, peaceful, and charming on its surface, the town is anything but. Carnage’s dichotomous culture and identity mirror Harper’s, reiterating the novel’s central notion that people (and places) are not always as simple as they appear.
Sam Porter and Nolan Rhodes disrupt both Harper’s and Carnage’s ability to maintain their facades. When Sam arrives in town to delve into long-buried mysteries, Harper’s resolve is shaken. She is terrified that Sam’s sleuthing will have devastating repercussions for her new home and identity, revealing the dark pasts of both. Nolan’s interest in the hit-and-run also destabilizes Harper and makes her fear exposure. She “let go of the woman [she] used to be” years prior and refuses to “force that broken woman back into the light. [She] can’t unravel this life [she’s] created here in Cape Carnage” (220). Despite Harper’s determination to deny the person she once was, her past resurfaces in the present. Sam and Nolan’s curiosity about Harper and Carnage excavates dark elements of the past, emphasizing the novel’s message that hiding behind positivity and peacefulness cannot eradicate the truth. Harper cannot fully reinvent herself because she has not confronted her pain; a new name and identity can’t resolve her grief or erase her history, making it impossible to truly move forward.
Healing From Past Trauma Together
Harper and Nolan’s fraught personal histories complicate their ability to find happiness in the present. Harper’s past life is defined by suffering and loss. Her parents died in a car accident when she was a child. She and her boyfriend, Adam, were kidnapped by a serial killer, who ultimately killed Adam, and Harper then felt compelled to murder the real Harper Starling and steal her identity to save herself. Over the following four years, she has lived a life of crime, forming an alliance with a notorious serial killer and performing strategic murders around Cape Carnage in the name of justice. Like Harper, Nolan is a product of his trauma and pain. Nolan and his brother, Billy, were involved in a hit-and-run accident that claimed Billy’s life and destroyed Nolan’s sense of happiness, opportunity, and self. Like Harper, he has adopted a life of crime in an attempt to combat his own grief. Neither he nor Harper has found healthy coping mechanisms to combat trauma; instead, they have compartmentalized their pain and resorted to violence because they have felt robbed of love and compassion. Through their connection, however, they are able to move forward, highlighting the importance of nonjudgmental support in healing and resolving trauma.
Harper and Nolan have had similarly traumatic experiences, and because of that, they are able to offer each other support in their healing processes. In Chapter 18, for example, Nolan watches Harper kill Sean McMillan and recognizes something of himself in her:
You might claw your way out, riddled with scars. You might hide your deepest, unhealing wounds just to make it through each day. You might survive it. But that’s the worst part. Because you can’t unsee it. You always know hell is there. It’s a creature lurking in the night, ready to rip another piece from you. You can live in fear of the next bite, or you can bite back (209).
Nolan’s use of second-person pronouns in this passage enacts the connection between his and Harper’s experiences of trauma and pain. The use of figurative language, like “claw,” “riddled,” “unhealing,” “hell,” “creature lurking,” “rip another piece,” and “bite back,” evokes notions of entrapment, terror, and fighting. Harper and Nolan’s trauma is like a caged animal—one they try to tame but ultimately can’t control. Once they recognize their common experiences of trauma, Harper and Nolan are able to encourage each other toward growth and healing.
Harper and Nolan cannot heal from their pain until they confront the abuse, suffering, and loss they’ve undergone. Nolan gradually starts sharing details from his past life with Harper, which shows his desire to reconcile with his sorrow and move beyond it. Harper allows herself to cry when Arthur finds her emerging from his basement, a rare moment in which Harper shows vulnerability and lets someone else comfort her. By the novel’s end, Harper and Nolan have begun to acknowledge their suffering, the first step they must take to find peace of mind. Although the novel’s ambiguous ending implies that they both still have healing left to do, it also offers hope for their characters with the recognition that they will have each other’s love and support on the journey.
Navigating the Boundaries Between Love, Hatred, and Obsession
Harper and Nolan’s enemies-to-lovers romance explores the possibilities of fostering true affection amid initial enmity and violence. When Harper and Nolan first meet, they simultaneously cannot stand one another and cannot resist one another. Harper feels threatened by Nolan’s seeming interest in her past life, but she is constantly distracted by his good looks and natural charm. It seems “physically impossible for [Nolan] to look anything less than perfect” (23), which threatens Harper’s resolve to despise and destroy him. Nolan feels similarly irritated by Harper’s innate wit, skill, beauty, and magnetism. He has spent years obsessing over her whereabouts and plotting her murder, “[b]ut as much as [he] want[s] to do us all a favor and wipe her from the face of the earth” (48), he is captivated by Harper. Harper isn’t the woman he expects when he arrives in Cape Carnage to avenge his late brother. She is bold and self-assured, complex and fearless—in short, she is Nolan’s perfect match. The evolution of their relationship demonstrates how, as they come to a greater understanding of the attraction between them, they are both forced to question who they thought they were.
The simultaneous hatred and desire between Harper and Nolan intensifies the narrative stakes and complicates the characters’ understandings of themselves. Ever since her kidnapping, Adam’s death, and her flight to Carnage, Harper has remade herself into someone unrecognizable. She has essentially adopted Sloane Sutherland’s warrior persona: “Courageous. Determined. Indomitable” (147). As Harper Starling, she has even sworn off sexual intimacy. This is why her attraction to Nolan is so frustrating to her: It feels like a weakness. Nolan feels similarly: He has sought out Harper with the sole intention of killing her, but he cannot put aside his attraction to her to accomplish his goal. As a result, both Nolan and Harper begin to wonder who they are. They are left wondering if they are the heartless killers they’ve turned into, or if they are more compassionate, fragile, and in need of love than they’ve let themselves believe.
The evolution of Harper and Nolan’s romance implies that all intimate relationships contain elements of love, hatred, and obsession. For Harper and Nolan, these volatile emotions manifest more literally. The lovers are constantly bickering and bantering. They often engage in violent pastimes—killing people, exhuming bodies, and taking justice into their own hands. They also incorporate elements of BDSM into their sex life, using ropes, needles, and knives during intercourse. Such dynamics excite the lovers and strengthen their bond. They are able to translate their initial disdain for and distrust of each other into intense, sensual games. Over time, this “play” evolves into respect, admiration, and devotion, highlighting the novel’s message that the passion inherent in hatred can easily shift toward passionate love, leaving participants questioning their very identities as the truth of their attraction is revealed.
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