The Bodyguard by Katherine Center review

She’s got his back. He’s got her heart. They’ve got a secret. What could possibly go wrong?

Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindergarten teacher than somebody who could kill you with her bare hands. But the truth is, she’s an elite bodyguard and she’s just been hired to protect a superstar actor from his stalker.

Jack Stapleton’s a Hollywood heartthrob – captured by paparazzi on beaches the world over, rising out of the waves in clingy board shorts and glistening like a Roman deity.

When Jack’s mom gets sick, he comes home to the family’s Texas ranch to help out. Only one catch: He doesn’t want his family to know about his stalker. Or the bodyguard thing. And so Hannah – against her will and her better judgment – finds herself pretending to be Jack’s girlfriend as a cover.

Protecting Jack should be easy. But protecting her own heart? That’s the hardest thing she’s ever done…

⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 3 out of 5.

After reading Hello Stranger and having such strange, mixed feelings about it, I wanted to pick up another one of Katherine Center’s books to try out more of this author’s writing style. And with so many people recently reading (and enjoying) The Bodyguard, I thought this book would be the perfect place to start.

Surprisingly, I had a lot of the same problems in The Bodyguard as I did Hello Stranger. According to both of these books, I seem to dislike the way Katherine Center writes the beginnings of books, though the plot will somehow still pull me in and get better the further I get from that rough beginning.

However, much of this book was bland and forgettable. Even though I finished reading this book about a week ago, the only thought that went through my head as I was gathering the words I wanted to say in this review was “I read it.”

The only real comment that stuck with me for this book was my feelings on the ending. The Bodyguard‘s ending is written as though it’s one of those “where are they now?” slideshows some movies have at the end. The book ends with a scene entirely told to readers, rather than placing us in the moment, which only separates us from the characters and events in the book.

Ultimately, I think this book just proved that Katherine Center’s writing is not for me.

So Frustrating! | Hello Stranger by Katherine Center

Love isn’t blind, it’s just little blurry.

Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life—placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition—the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality with every face she sees.

But, as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls into—love? Lust? A temporary obsession to distract from the real problems in her life?—with not one man but two very different ones. The timing couldn’t be worse.

If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to find her way. But perceiving anything clearly right now seems impossible. Even though there are things we can only find when we aren’t looking. And there are people who show up when we least expect them. And there are always, always other ways of seeing.

Hello Stranger gets published July 11th, 2023!

⭐⭐⭐⭐

Rating: 4 out of 5.

This book took me on a rollercoaster of emotions.

In Hello Stranger, we follow Sadie, an artist who has just learned she got into the final round of a portrait-painting competition. When her best friend decides to throw her a party to celebrate, Sadie is tasked to go out and buy wine.

Except the wine never gets delivered. Sadie has a seizure in the middle of the street.

After having surgery that will reduce the amount of seizures Sadie will have in the future, she wakes up without the ability to see people’s faces. Sure, everything else in Sadie’s eyes is crystal clear, but the space a person’s face should reside is just a jumble of features Sadie can’t comprehend.

Sadie is immediately struck with the biggest worry of her life: how will she compete in a portrait-painting competition if she can’t see faces?

As I was reading this book, I found the plot to be so incredibly frustrating. Sadie meets two men while she can’t see faces: one in the elevator of her apartment building, who reveals himself to be a total douche when he talks badly about his one night stand to a friend on the phone, and the other in the new vet hospital she takes her dog to. While she immediately falls in love with the vet (going as far as planning their wedding within minutes of meeting him), it was immediately obvious to me what the twist of this book was going to be.

At 30% of the way through this book, I was so frustrated that Sadie couldn’t see what was so obvious to me that I really thought I would decide not to finish this book. But I decided to give this book one last chance and skipped to the ending.

And then I went back to the 30% mark and read the entire book in one sitting.

Despite how frustratingly obvious the twist of this book is, it is intended to be that way. At the end of the book, there is a note from the author talking about how, even though a book is obvious, readers don’t read romance for the mystery of how the characters are going to get together. They read romance because they want to see these characters get together and see their happy ending.

Once I knew the ending and the hilarious misunderstandings it took to get there, I was obsessed with reading the rest of the book and getting to that ending. The things I originally found to be frustrating were ridiculous in humor at the end, and I ended up really enjoying this book despite my problems with it in the beginning!

I’m not sure how to recommend this book to others, however. Will other readers find it as frustrating as I did in the beginning? Should I recommend readers read until they understand what is going on, then read the end, then go back to read the middle? Hello Stranger is definitely a book that gets more enjoyable once you’ve reached the ending once, but getting to that ending is a bit difficult.