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A review by vivikay
Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang
3.0
*mild spoilers*
The premise was very interesting and writing style actually quite good however I felt the story was a bit unfinished and characters underdeveloped.
Five-star stranger is about a man (who remains unnamed) who is a rental stranger - someone for hire who fulfills the character of whoever the client wants him to be. There was little, if any, comedic relief in the story (despite how much fun you could have with the premise!), perhaps because it is told in the first person of our main character who is flawed because of his past trauma with his mother committing suicide. His behavior is cringey and stunted at times because of this and I found him to be kind of unlikable. I was hoping this would be redeemed a bit by learning more about his mother but we literally never learn why his mother was unloving towards him which he says is what caused him to feel the need to be a rental stranger in the first place.
It felt like there was little buildup to the main conflict in the story and switch was just flipped at the 90% mark with a pretty flat character arc afterwards. It also felt like at some point the MC wanted to stay in his pseudo-fathering relationship because he had romantic feelings for the mother based on some of their interactions but this was never revisited so things felt inconsistent at times.
It was mostly the writing style and prose that kept me reading - I felt there were interesting descriptions and monologues but the plot just wasn’t quite there.
The premise was very interesting and writing style actually quite good however I felt the story was a bit unfinished and characters underdeveloped.
Five-star stranger is about a man (who remains unnamed) who is a rental stranger - someone for hire who fulfills the character of whoever the client wants him to be. There was little, if any, comedic relief in the story (despite how much fun you could have with the premise!), perhaps because it is told in the first person of our main character who is flawed because of his past trauma with his mother committing suicide. His behavior is cringey and stunted at times because of this and I found him to be kind of unlikable. I was hoping this would be redeemed a bit by learning more about his mother but we literally never learn why his mother was unloving towards him which he says is what caused him to feel the need to be a rental stranger in the first place.
It felt like there was little buildup to the main conflict in the story and switch was just flipped at the 90% mark with a pretty flat character arc afterwards. It also felt like at some point the MC wanted to stay in his pseudo-fathering relationship because he had romantic feelings for the mother based on some of their interactions but this was never revisited so things felt inconsistent at times.
It was mostly the writing style and prose that kept me reading - I felt there were interesting descriptions and monologues but the plot just wasn’t quite there.