Five-Star Stranger
Our main character is a five-star stranger-for-rent on the app Rental Stranger. He makes his living by pretending to be fiances, mourners, dates, wedding guests--whatever people need. He's a master chameleon, and his longest-running client is a single mother who has hired him to pretend to be a father to her daughter. But her daughter is getting older now, and things are getting more complicated--especially when a client threatens to expose the ruse. He's forced to confront what led him to this life devoid of real connections--and how he really feels about his pretend daughter.
The premise of this novel was fascinating, and this is one of very few times when a nameless narrator worked for me (it's usually a pet peeve). The various stranger jobs added entertainment alongside the more character-driven reflections that grounded this novel. While I wished the ending had been a bit more fleshed out, this one will stick with me.
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Publisher’s Description
In Kat Tang’s exciting and resonant debut, a “Rental Stranger”—a companion hired under various guises—walks the line between personal and professional in surprising new ways.
Would you hire someone to be the best man at your wedding? Your stand-in brother? Your husband?
In an age where online ratings are all-powerful, Five-Star Stranger follows the adventures of a top-rated man on the Rental Stranger app—a place where users can hire a pretend fiancé, a wingman, or an extra mourner for a funeral. Referred to only as Stranger, the narrator navigates New York City under the guise of characters he plays, always maintaining a professional distance from his clients.
But, when a nosy patron threatens to upend his long-term role as father to a young girl, Stranger begins to reckon with his attachment to his pretend daughter, her mother, and his own fraught past. Now, he must confront the boundaries he has drawn and explore the legacy of abandonment that shaped his life.
Five-Star Stranger is a strikingly vivid novel about the commodification of relationships in a gig economy, isolation in a hyperconnected world, and the risk of asking for what we want from those who cannot give. This is the story of a man who finds out who he is by being anyone but himself.