Cape Carnage: Population is tourists, serial killers, and questionable life choices
I picked up Tourist Season by Brynne Weaver because it was the selection for one of my book clubs. The premise sounded delightfully unhinged: Harper Starling is a serial killer who disposes of bad people with a woodchipper. I'm not saying that's a healthy coping mechanism, but as thriller hooks go, it certainly grabbed my attention.
At first, I thought I was settling in for a darkly humorous thriller. Harper was interesting, the setting was quirky, and Cape Carnage seemed like the kind of place where everyone knows their neighbors and several of those neighbors probably have bodies buried in the backyard. Then Nolan Rhodes arrived.
Nolan is another serial killer who comes to town intending to kill Harper after mistaking her for someone else. Instead of a cat-and-mouse thriller, the story quickly became a dark romance centered on the attraction between two serial killers. If dark romance is your genre, you'll probably understand the appeal much better than I did. Unfortunately, that's where the book started to lose me.
I'm not much of a romance reader, and I'm definitely not the target audience for pages and pages of sweaty bondage sex. Once the clothes started coming off, I found myself skipping ahead. That's never a good sign. By about two-thirds of the way through the book, I realized I wasn't particularly invested in the story anymore.
The biggest issue wasn't that the book was bad. It was that it wasn't the book I expected. I came looking for a thriller and found a romance that happened to feature multiple serial killers. The murders, investigations, and vigilante justice all felt secondary to the relationship.
And speaking of serial killers ... there are a lot of them. Harper and Nolan are only the beginning. By the time additional killers started appearing, I found myself wondering whether Cape Carnage has a larger serial killer population than most major cities.
That said, I can see why this series has found an audience. The writing is engaging, the concept is memorable, and readers who enjoy dark romance will likely have a completely different experience than I did. Harper herself is a fun character, and the opening chapters genuinely hooked me.
In the end, though, this wasn't my kind of thriller because it really wasn't a thriller at all. It was a dark romance wearing a thriller costume.
If you're looking for morally questionable characters, over-the-top situations, and a romance between serial killers, you may have a great time. If you're hoping for a traditional thriller, you might find yourself staring at the final page asking the same question I did:
"What on earth did I just read?"
