Book Review: "The Bodyguard" by Katherine Center

The Bodyguard by Katherine Center was not a difficult read and not an enjoyable one. There are a few aspects of this book that gave it a promising start - a fun plot (bodyguard who must look after a famous actor) and a unique dynamic between main characters (small but mighty female protagonist and lovable, endearing, hot actor), but Center does not do a good job at setting up these characters backstories and any attempt at humor consistently falls flat.

*SPOILERS AHEAD*

We open The Bodyguard by learning that Hannah has lost her mom and is pouring herself into her work to ignore her own feelings about her loss. Completely understandable and a good reason for Hannah to be feeling down, yet after demanding from her boss to be placed on an assignment she somehow has a complete meltdown over having to take on the Jack Stapleton project. For some reason, she is written as a character that has no ability to regulate her emotions, coming off crazy emotional and emotionless at the most random times. Understanding this could be due to her mom’s death and her boyfriend breaking up with her, she makes fun of both of these situations with a strange humor that seems to make light of how she is feeling. It’s hard to follow and difficult to read, making Hannah extremely unlikeable.

Hannah also has the weirdest, most complicated relationship with her co-workers and her boss, who honest to God seems like the shittiest, most unlikeable person. She deals with his constant crap all with the hopes of being placed in London for a big project and refers to these people as being some of the only people she has in her whole life. So, they are like family but spend the whole book treating each other like shit and making their lives miserable? I just don’t understand the dynamic going on.

A lot of Center’s writing makes this book almost unreadable. They skip and rush through seemingly important plot points and muddle all character development. We don’t see hardly any progression in Hannah’s feelings towards Jack until one day she is just in love with him? The Stapleton family has their own problems, as Jack’s brother Hank hates his guts for seemingly “killing” their other brother Drew (a HUGE character point for Jack), just for Jack to randomly announce to his family that Drew was the one driving the car? And then all is forgiven?

Speaking of Jack, he has a very warped perception of life (could just be the fame), but then goes on to blame himself for everything. He doesn’t seem to care if he lives or dies and for some reason we are supposed to find it romantic that he would choose to die for Hannah? A scene, by the way, that comes out of left field and reads with the WORST humor, making it impossible to know what the fuck is going on and making me wonder why I am reading this book.

Overall, it is rare that I find a protagonist so insufferable. I understand being unreliable or even being seriously flawed. But Hannah doesn’t even fall into these categories. Simply, she is written poorly and this book complicates a simple plot idea into something that categorically flops.