Adelaide is a work of contemporary literary fiction. True to that genre, Adelaide explores facets of contemporary culture through a realistic, fallible protagonist. In particular, Wheeler focuses on the ways in which contemporary dating culture influences protagonist Adelaide’s mental health and self-regard. The novel has a romantic bent, as its primary conflicts originate from Adelaide’s fraught relationship with the stereotypically handsome, charming, and elusive Rory. The narrative’s repeated references to André Aciman’s Call Me by Your Name reflect another element of literary fiction, where works in the genre are in active conversation with one another. Literary fiction responds to, critiques, and develops these other works’ ideas and arguments.

Through Adelaide’s experiences, the novel interrogates the Complexities of Unrequited Love. Before Rory, Adelaide derives her power from treating men the way that they treat her. She exists in a dating culture defined by ghosting and rife with poor communication and destructive emotional manipulation. Meanwhile, influenced in part by the romantic books she reads, Adelaide longs for a more serious and committed relationship. She often imagines that she and her future lover are “tied by fate into an inextricable knot” (12).