Title: The Bodyguard
Author: Katherine Center
Publisher: St. Martin’s Press and MacMillan Audio
Genre: Romance
Format: Kindle / Audiobook
Narrator: Patti Murin
Print No. of Pages: 320
Date of Publication: July 19, 2022
My Rating: 5 Stars
DESCRIPTION:
She’s got his back.
Hannah Brooks looks more like a kindgerten teacher than somebody who could kill you with a wine bottle opener. Or a ballpoint pen. Or a dinner napkin. But the truth is, she’s an Executive Protection Agent (aka "bodyguard"), and she just got hired to protect superstar actor Jack Stapleton from his middle-aged, corgi-breeding stalker.
He’s got her heart.
Jack Stapleton’s a household name—captured by paparazzi on beaches the world over, famous for, among other things, rising out of the waves in all manner of clingy board shorts and glistening like a Roman deity. But a few years back, in the wake of a family tragedy, he dropped from the public eye and went off the grid.
They’ve got a secret.
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. Even though her ex, like a jerk, says no one will believe it.
What could possibly go wrong???
Hannah hardly believes it, herself. But the more time she spends with Jack, the more real it all starts to seem. And there lies the heartbreak. Because it’s easy for Hannah to protect Jack. But protecting her own, long-neglected heart? That’s the hardest thing she’s ever done.
MY THOUGHTS:
In this enjoyable, perfect summer read, Katherine Center pairs bodyguard Hannah Brooks with movie star Jack Stapleton. Barely having a chance to recover from a broken heart, and not going on an assignment that she had really hoped for, Hannah fights tooth and nail not to take this job, just hoping that she can get a job in Korea or London…anywhere but where she is where her ex-boyfriend works for the same security agent that she as.
Her boss does not listen to her protests and, before long. not only is Hannah guarding Jack, as the principal agent, she agrees to spend time with him at his family’s Texas ranch while his mother is in the process of recovering from serious illness. Hannah does know the importance of this job, as Jack has a stalker, albeit a middle-aged corgi breeder, but a stalker nonetheless.
There is one catch, beyond spending possibly weeks with Jack in close quarters. Jack does not want to worry his family, so he asked Hannah to pose as his girlfriend, and the plan seems like it will work since they are about to spend time together at the ranch. She reluctantly agrees, but does indeed follow through.
Fake or real? Considering that Hannah still has baggage from her broken heart, the last thing that she could imagine is being attached to a Hollywood star, but faking it becomes more and more difficult every passing day.
Not only was this a delightful read, I was able to enjoy the excellent narration by Patti Murin. Considering how humorous this book was, this narrator did a fine job as she read the story with ease and excellent inflection. It was impossible not to laugh out loud more than once in this wonderful book.
Many thanks to St. Martin's Press, McMillan Audio and to NetGalley for this ARC for review. This is my honest opinion.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
She won a creative writing scholarship in high school, and then went on to major in creative writing at Vassar College, where she won the Vassar College Fiction Prize. At 22, she won a fellowship to the University of Houston’s Creative Writing Program and moved home to Texas with plans to become Jane Austen ASAP.
Didn’t happen quite that way. Of course. Instead, she began a decade of struggling, agonizing, and questioning the meaning of life before finally finding a fairy-godmother-like agent and getting a dream-come-true book deal for her debut novel, The Bright Side of Disaster.
A total happy ending. And also, just the beginning.
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