Reviews with content warning for Medical content - The Bodyguard

First person romance is far from my usual, but I was completely taken in by the warmth and freshness of this story. Yes, it's a trope for the ages, but the healthiness of the relationship between the leads was such an unexpected delight. A male love interest with emotional maturity and an overabundance of green flags? Clear discussions of boundaries and feelings? It was a breath of fresh, Texas air and the best kind of romcom you can root for all wrapped into one wise, silly, hopeful package. I adored it. I adored all of these characters. And I especially adored Jack's family.

The one thing that stretched my suspension of belief was the bodyguard team's antics. There's a lot of telling us about how great they are, meanwhile what's shown is a lot of... high school level drama. I just wish we'd seen more of what made this team - and our lead by association - capable enough to be hired by a beleaguered celebrity.

All that being said: Do not - do not! - go into this book expecting realistic drama or steamy romance. It's a bantery, feel-good, reverse bodyguard trope that runs on rom-com logic, but (mostly) in the best way.

Content Warnings

Graphic: Gun violence, Suicide attempt, Stalking, Grief, Death, Physical abuse, Car accident, Death of parent, and Domestic abuse

Moderate: Alcoholism, Blood, Cancer, Injury/Injury detail, Toxic relationship, and Medical content

Minor: Vomit and Abandonment

Overall: It's a very light-hearted, hopeful book but it deals with some background heavy topics. In order or prevalence:

Death of parent, death, grief: Very beginning of book skims over the main character's mother dying, and the grief from that is a catalyst for the rest of the book. Grief (and hope) is a major theme.

Domestic/Physical abuse: Past, as a memory. A very violent incidence of it and the injuries/aftermath is described by character who was a child at the time.

Stalking: With one lead being a famous actor, there's lots of discussions about stalking in general. Stalking incidents are discussed in detail, though light-heartedly, until

one gets violent -> see gun violence.

Gun violence, suicide attempt, blood, injury: Someone is shot at and mildy injured.

In a hostage situation characters are held at gunpoint and one suffers a graze on the head that bleeds a lot but isn't too serious. The shooter plans to kill himself, not the hostages, but is talked down.

Toxic Relationship: Heroine has a generally very shitty ex-boyfriend.

Cancer: The male lead's mother is going through cancer treatment. There's mention of having and recovering from surgery, and the characters often briefly visit a hospital. The prognosis

ends up being very good and she completely recovers.

Alcoholism: More than one background character suffers from it.

One was killed before the story from driving recklessly under the influence.

Car accident, death: Past incident. The accident is described in detail more than once and led to a death by drowning.

The driver was under the influence, drove too fast, went off a bridge and drowned.

Drowning: One almost-incident during the story and one in the past - both described in some detail.

Vomit: One character has a phobia that he often vomits after being exposed to. It's not described in detail.

Abandonment: A character briefly describes a parent leaving them and their other parent abruptly when they were very young.

willa_reads_books's review against another edition

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emotional lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

i actually didn’t like hannah at first, but as her character developed, she became much more likeable. the premise was fun. i almost cried a few times. it was good :)

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sebradley29's review against another edition

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funny inspiring lighthearted reflective relaxing slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Content Warnings

queerbean's review against another edition

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funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? A mix
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

This is pretty good although it’s really predictive, very, I mean the plot twist didn’t blow my mind at all because I just knew.
i honestly enjoyed reading this thing. It was cute, a little surprising, romantic, cute again, interesting. But I think a certain tipe of person would like it more than me , or at least someone who enjoys reading this cliche appearance things (the short girl, muscular guy, you know, the steriotope) that are considered hot now days. I don’t, but most people do. (So do you know, it’s not full of blondes and skinnie girls and that Kind of straight esteriotipes, I’m just saying that the book was always mentioning the fact that they had diferent highs and muscular masses and in my personal opinion is a little cringe and not realistic enough to be “cool” or sexy, just annoying)
Despite it, yeah, I would reccomend it, Jack was lovely and I actually loved the fact that hanna was able to fucking tackle him, that was awesome.
A good read
3.75 ⭐️

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ktdakotareads's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted fast-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Plot
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

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matthewslaura's review against another edition

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funny lighthearted medium-paced

Plot- or character-driven? Character
Strong character development? Yes
Loveable characters? Yes
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Okay I love Jack and Hannah & I love how real they felt. I read this stupidly fast because it was like watching a movie. I’m definitely going to read more books by Katherine Center in the future.

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bethrb's review against another edition

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funny hopeful lighthearted relaxing slow-paced

Plot- or character-driven? N/A
Strong character development? No
Loveable characters? N/A
Diverse cast of characters? No
Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

This was silly fun, but Bratz/fashion dolls did not deserve the stray criticism they got here!

Everything about those dolls and

Kennedy

felt so... 2010's feminism.

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