Please note that I received this book via NetGalley. This did not affect my rating or review.
So this was a weird one. It’s definitely a romance. But I felt like the romance between Hannah and Jack took way too long to get going. I wasn’t picking up any he’s really into her vibes at all in this until a key point in the book. It also as some have pointed out felt like a very slapstick book. I mean I laughed a lot. Robby was a mess. Taylor could kick rocks. Glenn was a hilarious boss who was tired of everyone dating and breaking up. But the central romance was not the real focus it seemed. I did like how things wrapped up in this one, we kind of jump forward by 5 years at least in the end (you have to read the context clues) but you don’t get to really “know” a lot of things that you may have questions about. I definitely liked this one better than “What You Wish For” and by the way, I am still annoyed by that book.
“The Bodyguard” follows Executive Protection Agent, Hannah Brooks. Hannah is reeling from the sudden death of her mother. Her boss refuses to let her come back to work, so she’s left behind while her boyfriend goes off on a client trip. He of course breaks up with her before he goes (because Robby sucks beyond the telling). Hannah is still dealing with this weeks later, but when Glenn gets a new client, he ends up assigning it to Hannah. She’s being asked to pretend to be the girlfriend of Hollywood movie star, Jack Stapleton for a few weeks. Jack is in town because his mother is ill, but he has a stalker that is threatening him. Due to this, Hannah is going to have to be up close and personal with him.
So Hannah. I really liked her. She has a good sense of right and wrong. I also liked that she refused to forgive people who did crappy things towards her. Look, I am not one of those live, laugh, love people. You screw with me I am going to do my level best to 1) never speak to you again and 2) chuckle when karma comes back to slap you in the face. I think that women often are treated as being unreasonable when we cut off people from our lives who do not enhance that. Screw that. Anyway, Hannah has a good sense of boundaries, and I maybe chuckled at the end that you find out that she’s still holding a relationship at arms length years later and honestly I don’t blame her. I liked her interactions with other characters and just genuinely laughed a lot during many of the scenes we get.
Jack felt a bit paper thin to me for way too much of this book. Things get going with him as I said, at a key point and then you can see “something” there between Hannah and him. I just felt like for a while that there was so much of Hannah’s office antics going on, that you didn’t get to spend too much time with the central romance.
The other characters like Robby (needed beat with a hammer), Taylor (needed pushed into the ocean), Glenn, Kelly, and others really do build up this book though. The office side of things had me wishing that this was a comedy show I could watch. Everyone is highly unprofessional with each other I thought and were messes! I would never hire this firm.
The writing was good and the flow too. I did think things got really draggy in the end though and there’s a whole thing that gets tossed out that would have been better left out I thought. It was not needed and it felt like filler.
The ending was sweet though. I really enjoyed it.