Five-Star Stranger Audiobook By Kat Tang cover art

Five-Star Stranger

A Novel

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Five-Star Stranger

By: Kat Tang
Narrated by: Julian Cihi
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About this listen

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.

©2024 Kat Tang (P)2024 Simon & Schuster Audio
Family Life Genre Fiction Literary Fiction United States World Literature Stranger
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How come I am crying and happy at this? I don’t understand, and this whole crying thing is not cool.

Heartbreaking and sweet

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the story took an unexpected turn in the end (not in a good way to me). Overall it was ok.

Had good parts that kept me engaged.

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I loved the characters, and I hated them. I didn’t know what the book was about and I thought the storyline was fun.

Interesting!

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I really enjoyed this book. The characters, even with short introductions, were not one dimensional. The storyline invites the lister to think differently about decisions and what is viewed as standard. It was the right length and I still wanted more.

Interesting and Thoughtful

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The mom, smoking, drinking, working at a department store and able to afford rent and a rental person at $150 per hour? Didn’t like ending.

Novel idea.

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Seemed like it had a very abrupt, unresolved ending. I did not care for it.

Different

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After listening this story I don't know how I feel. I have more questions than answers. It was a quick and easy listen 🎧 I enjoyed the narrator

I don't know

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