This book wasn’t exactly what I thought it would be. I’ve seen that a lot of people who have said the same thing and that’s mainly because of the cover of the novel. The cover—while gorgeous—does not fit the tone of the book. Tone, writing style, plot, and character development are all things I’m going to go over in my review below.

So, back to the tone of the novel. While the cover conveys a bright and happy façade, this book is anything but that. It’s very heavy in terms of moral dilemmas and questions that it brings up. I really thought I was going into a lighthearted book that definitely was going to have moral dilemmas, but not without a single happy event. It was very draining in my opinion. I think the publishers missed the mark with the book’s content vs. its cover.

With the writing style: it definitely wasn’t bad, it was just… flat. The main character wasn’t very emotional, so I think that’s why everything was flat and monotonal. I think in every description and review he’s just called the “stranger”. Because we never knew his name, because he was always changing and so volatile, I never got attached and that bled into the writing style with Stranger’s characterization. However, I do want to talk on Tang’s writing style overall because it was so detailed and developed that it was easy to imagine everything that was happening while I was reading. I think she’s a very talented writer, it’s just with this particular combination of the character and his development, everything just fell flat.

So, with that, let’s move on to character development. You guys already know how I feel about Stranger. With that in mind, he didn’t have much development. A lot of what happened in the book was forced upon him and not his decisions. To be honest, I don’t really know if he learned anything by the end of the book or if he just kept being this person who never let his own emotions in. However, there was something that showed a little development and I’ll mention that in the spoilers, but that was about it. Lily and Darlene were my favorite and showed the most growth. Lily’s mother, though, mainly just made me feel icky with what she had to do with her work and what she was doing to deceive her daughter.

The plot was soo interesting along with the idea itself, but it just didn’t hit its mark. A lot of times you just followed Stranger on his jobs before really figuring out where the book was going. You figure that you’re just going to follow Stranger as he interacts with Lily, but to be honest, you saw Lily only four or five times throughout the whole novel. So, that’s also where I got really confused as to where the author was leading the reader.

Spoilers ahead.

Alright, so the end of the novel Stranger no longer sees Lily, he has deleted his rental stranger app, and seemingly moved on with his life. However, I really didn’t feel resolved in anything. A lot of the ending’s “wrap-ups” were basically ruminations of what could have been or what may have been happening. Honestly, that’s not my cup of tea so I really didn’t like it. Stranger was basically wondering what Lily was doing in college, as she got married, etc. Then he imagined sending Lily mail? To be honest, I was confused. So, yeah, not my favorite.

Overall, two out of five stars. I didn’t like the flat tone and monotonal main character. I did think the basic subject was pretty interesting, but the book itself didn’t pull me in as much as I’d like.

Source: Book of the Month

(P.S. You can read this book for free by signing up for a free trial of Audible, which gives you two free audiobooks of your choice!)