NIK VS. TOURIST SEASON

Brynne Weaver is Nik Robinson’s tour guide as he digs into Seasons of Carnage: Book One, TOURIST SEASON, but is it worth the Hawaiian shirt and jams?

Title: Tourist Season (Seasons of Carnage: Book One)

Author: Brynne Weaver

Genre: Romance/Horror/Comedy

Pages: 400

Format: Hardcover/paperback/ebook/audiobook

I want to begin by saying that I am most certainly not the intended demographic for Brynne Weaver’s work, being that I am a middle-aged man. These books are written by a woman, for women. It’s worth adding that context, because I have nonetheless become a fan of her writing.

I’d recently read Weaver’s Ruinous Love trilogy, consisting of Butcher & Blackbird, Leather & Lark, Scythe & Sparrow, and a supplemental short titled Love & Other Killers. Though there appeared to be a degree of diminishing returns as the trilogy continued, I still managed to enjoy each installment.

When I learned that a new trilogy was on its way–loosely connected with the world Weaver introduced in Ruinous Love–I knew I was going to give it a shot. With the second installment coming out in June, it seemed like this would be a good time to review the first.

Tourist Season kicks off the Seasons of Carnage trilogy by taking us on a trip the the quaint, tourism-focused East Coast town of Cape Carnage, where Harper Starling has been building a comfortable and relatively stable life for herself. But all of that could come falling down with the arrival of Nolan Rhodes, a man haunted by a tragic event in the past and on the hunt for the woman he blames for that tragedy. But is Harper really who he thinks she is?

Like the previous trilogy, Seasons of Carnage is packed to the brim with dramatically broken people, occasional cartoonishly entertaining violence, and sexual tension–and release. Weaver’s books populate our world with an unlikely number of serial murderers who do their best to convince themselves–and the readers–that they’re the good guys. And in a world with so many seasoned and compulsive killers wandering about, it stands to reason that romance might be in the air.

After reading a few of her books, it begins to feel as if Weaver is working from a bit of a template, but it’s a template that works for the material she’s writing. This is what you can expect from Brynne Weaver’s narratives (at least in the four books I’ve read so far): Killers meet, they butt heads and antagonize one another, they begin to develop feelings for each other, sexual intimacy emerges, they experience a sense of betrayal through misunderstanding, and one finally becomes the other’s salvation by rescuing them from some horrible fate.

If you’ve ever wanted to toss Silence of the Lambs into a blender with Basic Instinct and a splash of Fifty Shades of Grey, these books would be the literary equivalent of what you’d receive, assuming you also incorporate some off-color humor and witty dialogue.

While Weaver’s books are certainly not horror, they are absolutely horror-adjacent. Her depictions of violence, torture, and murder are often graphic and unfiltered, which makes for an enjoyable experience for someone like myself–who thoroughly enjoys Splatterpunk and more transgressive literature.

Nikolas P. Robinson is an avid consumer of books, movies, and television, especially where horror, science fiction, and fantasy are concerned. When he isn’t consuming media, he’s creating it as an author, photographer, videographer, and news producer in Portland, Oregon.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.