The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler

The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler

Narrated by Elise Arsenault

I went to Alaska way back in 1994 and I loved it there – so very different from Australia! I admit I’m drawn to books set in Alaska, even though my last two attempts haven’t gone so well. Third time’s the charm, right? Well, The Tourist Attraction was largely successful for me, certainly better than the other Alaskan audios I’ve listened to recently, so I’m calling it a win.

At first I thought the trope as going to be the grumpy one with the sunshine-y one but Graham is only grumpy with tourists other than Zoey. As soon as he sees her, he’s deeply smitten. I am generally a fan of the grumpy/sunshine-y trope though so I didn’t mind the way Graham was with his diner customers. He has only three things on the menu, doesn’t make anything to order – you get them how he makes them and he doesn’t make fancy cocktails, except for a “Growly Bear” which he concocted after continued pressure from customers (and even then he made it the most potent and terrible thing he could think of). He even makes his customers clean up after themselves. It doesn’t really make sense to him why The Tourist Attraction (the diner, not the book) is so popular. But it is. The customers line up around the corner waiting to get in every day of the tourist season.

Most of the tourists in Moose Springs, Alaska are wealthy and privileged and, in the experience of the locals, not terribly respectful of the wildlife or other people in general. The locals tolerate the tourists but aren’t particularly welcoming. This is not what I experienced when I was in Alaska, where tourist dollars were welcomed and valued. (Then again, we weren’t awful and rude so maybe that helped.) The Moose Springs Resort is the largest employer in the vicinity and caters to a wealthy clientele – many of whom visit Graham’s diner, much to his dismay.

One such tourist is Lana, a very wealthy socialite who visits Moose Springs for two weeks every year. I thought it was for a holiday but it became apparent she was doing business things behind the scenes. Lana has been visiting The Tourist Attraction and hitting on Graham for years. He counts her as a friend but he’s never been interested in anything romantic with her. This year, Lana’s best friend Zoey is coming to Moose Springs and when Graham lays eyes on Zoey he is gone gone gone.

Zoey is not wealthy and she is most definitely not a socialite. Her friendship with Lana is unlikely and somewhat inexplicable to be honest. A small-town waitress, Zoey has been saving for years and years to visit Alaska. As the blurb says, Alaska isn’t just on her bucket list, it is her bucket list.

Zoey is in town for two weeks. Unfortunately, most of her tourist activities are somewhat disastrous, ranging from simply getting lost, getting arrested or having a recalcitrant horse on a trail ride to actual danger. And everywhere she goes, Graham is around.

They dance around each other for a time, each attracted to the other but convinced that nothing can come of it because she’s not staying. It never really made sense to me why Zoey staying wasn’t discussed way earlier in the piece. As best I can tell, Zoey had no strong ties to her hometown and there wasn’t much discussion of close family or other friends. It seemed like an obvious solution and I didn’t get why it wasn’t raised until very late in the book. As conflicts go, it was fairly thin.

The other conflict in the book generally is locals v. tourists and Lana’s business activities play into this. Even though Zoey was a tourist, Graham immediately put her in a unique category all of her own so it wasn’t anything that really kept them apart romantically.

The sex is fade to black which was not my favourite but I didn’t hate it either. There was plenty of Graham and Zoey together to keep me generally happy.

Given the bulk of the book took place in only two weeks, listeners have to buy a bit of instalove to enjoy the story, but an epilogue set some months later helps here. But, considering that two weeks, the THREE break ups in the last couple of days I counted seemed excessive and tiresome.

Animal lovers may be distressed by the relocation of a beloved moose due to tourists behaving badly so that’s worth a mention here.

The absolute best character in the book however, the one who won my heart, was Jake, the border collie. Graham rescued him when he was only a puppy. Jake is blind so needs some extra consideration with some things and he gets stressed and vomits if he’s with strangers but he’s an all-round awesome dog who is made of cute. Graham’s good friends, twins Easton and Ashton, take turns in looking after Jake during the day and are constantly trying to steal Jake away from Graham. Jake is a beloved and very pampered animal. Graham likes to dress Jake in various outfits which Jake suffers through. It’s sweet and fun. Of course, Jake adores Zoey so it’s in the rules that Graham and she belong together.

The narration was mostly good. Ms. Arsenault didn’t have a very deep male character voice but it was different enough that I could tell who was talking so it worked. Her pacing was good and her intonations apt. There were a couple of things that didn’t work for me though.

When the dialogue said “roared” or “yelled” or “shouted” there was no discernible change in the volume of the performance. It reduced the impact of the text. I’m used to narrators actually yelling (just standing back from the microphone to do it so that the listener’s eardrums stay intact). That didn’t happen here. Some of the humour was lost because of it. (“Don’t yell at me.” “I’m not yelling!!” etc etc).

There were also some small mispronunciations and wrong character voices used for dialogue here and there but this wasn’t particularly intrusive.

Every now and then there was an odd micropause which had me a little nonplussed. The most memorable one was a line which sounded in my ears like:

“A man with legs
braced apart”

Instead of “a man, with legs braced apart”

It took me a while to work out what was so special about a man having legs! LOL

Also, and this is very much an Australian thing; it took me a few chapters to get used to the pronunciation of Graham’s name. Here, we say “Gray-em/Gray-um”. In America, it’s “Gram”. I kept thinking of grandmothers. Mostly however, the narration was engaging and so was the book.

Kaetrin


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4 thoughts on “The Tourist Attraction by Sarah Morgenthaler

  1. Not just an Australian thing; I remember listening to something a while back and wondering who the hell “Gram” was when the book blurb clearly said the character’s name was Graham.

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