Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of misogyny, sexism, sexual violence, and emotional abuse.

The Sweetest Oblivion is a contemporary romance novel that falls under the subgenres of dark romance and mafia romance. These categorizations dictate the parameters of the narrative and the tropes it employs to facilitate its primary romantic storyline. As the subgenre name suggests, dark romance books contain darker themes and characters with questionable morals. Dark romance titles place the characters’ traumatic experiences at the fore of the narrative, rather than shielding a character’s difficult past to create character complexity. Another key element of dark romance novels is their abundant sexual content, colloquially termed “smut,” which includes explicit depictions of sexual relationships and sexual encounters. The novels embrace “open-door” versus “closed-door sex scenes” in order to intensify the passion between the male and female romantic leads.

In the dark romance subgenre, the primary characters are known to be morally duplicitous, possessive, and violent. These character traits most often manifest in the male leads, who will take extreme action to “protect” or maintain their power over their female love interest. The female characters are often more docile and find their male counterpart’s aggression arousing rather than repellant.