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.

This book contains scenes that depict suicide.

Have you ever wanted to be somebody else? What if you could get paid to do it? In Five-Star Stranger, a mysterious man with a troubled past makes a living as a rent-a-stranger in New York City. This novel feels like a delicious peek behind the scenes of New York’s most choreographed and convoluted social rituals and into the lives of the people whose lies rest shakily upon them.

Thanks to his Oscar-worthy acting skills, ingenious costume changes, and a pathological need to give people what they want, our nameless protagonist becomes highly sought after on the Rental Stranger app. Morphing seamlessly from Wall Street finance bro to harried English Professor to alcoholic deadbeat in the space of a single day keeps him too busy to take stock of his own life. But a long-term gig as father to a perceptive nine-year-old proves his most satisfying role yet as he forms a real bond. And somewhere amongst elementary school homework and trips to the park, “Daddy” breaks his cardinal rule: don’t get attached.

Five-Star Stranger reminds us that we don’t have to be alone to be lonely and that making other people happy isn’t always in their best interests, or our own. To be truly known is more difficult and vulnerable than even the most nuanced performance, but may ultimately be the only way forward. With its fast-paced zipping between clients, neighborhoods, and roles but also rich emotional plumbing, it left me surprised and delighted from beginning to end.