Preview
  • Five-Star Stranger

  • A Novel
  • By: Kat Tang
  • Narrated by: Julian Cihi
  • Length: 6 hrs and 47 mins
  • 3.8 out of 5 stars (25 ratings)

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Five-Star Stranger

By: Kat Tang
Narrated by: Julian Cihi
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Publisher's summary

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
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What listeners say about Five-Star Stranger

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

Heartbreaking and sweet

How come I am crying and happy at this? I don’t understand, and this whole crying thing is not cool.

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  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Had good parts that kept me engaged.

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

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Interesting!

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

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    2 out of 5 stars

Novel idea.

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.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Different

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

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

I don't know

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

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