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Five-Star Stranger by Kat Tang

Literary fiction

Five-Star Stranger

Debut

We love supporting debut authors. Congrats, Kat Tang, on your first book!

by Kat Tang

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Quick take

This astute exploration of loneliness, connection, and the gig economy follows everyday life for a stranger-for-hire.

Good to know

  • Illustrated icon, Psychological

    Psychological

  • Illustrated icon, Sad

    Sad

  • Illustrated icon, Unreliable_Narrator

    Unreliable narrator

  • Illustrated icon, Salacious

    Salacious

Synopsis

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.

Content warning

This book contains scenes that depict suicide.

Free sample

Get an early look from the first pages of Five-Star Stranger.

Five-Star Stranger

CHAPTER 1

The first time Lily held my hand, she could only grasp my pinky and ring finger, and though she’d grown fast as knotweed over the years, at age nine she still gripped the same two fingers when we walked home from school together. Uncapped fire hydrants hosed down passing cars, making the September heat bearable as we side-stepped puddles and circumvented ladies carting sweet mangos sprinkled with Tajín. Lily wore a new tie-dye shirt we had made over the summer, though her skirt was beginning to fray around the hem. One thread in particular had unraveled enough to tickle her shin, and every couple of steps she would swat at it, as though it were a mosquito.

“Dad?” she said, her face turned up toward mine—inquisitive black eyes pinched down at the outer corners, giving her a serious look in line with her nature. I had been staring, perhaps too intently, at the thread, waving and dancing with each of her steps. I wanted to snip it or pull it, fix it, but instead I looked back to Lily with a smile.

“Yes, Moose?”

“Did you hear what I said?”

“Something about maps?”

“Yeah, Dad,” she said, with an exasperated emphasis on the word Dad that took me by surprise. For as long as I’d known Lily she’d been a perfect daughter—perceptive, obedient, and smart—but also, especially around me, overly polite and presentable as though I might run away if I realized she was capable of being upset. This made sense: I saw her only once a week, so she always wanted to present the best version of herself, as though auditioning for a more permanent role in my life. So I didn’t know whether to be delighted or distressed by her change in tone.

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Why I love it

Have you ever wanted to be somebody else? What if you could get paid to do it? In Five-Star Stranger, a mysterious man with a troubled past makes a living as a rent-a-stranger in New York City. This novel feels like a delicious peek behind the scenes of New York’s most choreographed and convoluted social rituals and into the lives of the people whose lies rest shakily upon them.

Thanks to his Oscar-worthy acting skills, ingenious costume changes, and a pathological need to give people what they want, our nameless protagonist becomes highly sought after on the Rental Stranger app. Morphing seamlessly from Wall Street finance bro to harried English Professor to alcoholic deadbeat in the space of a single day keeps him too busy to take stock of his own life. But a long-term gig as father to a perceptive nine-year-old proves his most satisfying role yet as he forms a real bond. And somewhere amongst elementary school homework and trips to the park, “Daddy” breaks his cardinal rule: don’t get attached.

Five-Star Stranger reminds us that we don’t have to be alone to be lonely and that making other people happy isn’t always in their best interests, or our own. To be truly known is more difficult and vulnerable than even the most nuanced performance, but may ultimately be the only way forward. With its fast-paced zipping between clients, neighborhoods, and roles but also rich emotional plumbing, it left me surprised and delighted from beginning to end.

Member ratings (5,124)

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