The Bodyguard

The Bodyguard is a 2022 novel by best-selling American novelist Katherine Center. A lighthearted romantic comedy about the consequences of feeling unlovable, The Bodyguard focuses on the story of Hannah Brooks, an Executive Protection Agent (colloquially known as a bodyguard), as she is assigned to protect superstar Jack Stapleton from his tenacious stalkers. By employing many of the classic tropes of contemporary romance, Center explores how people from completely different worlds can learn to forgive and accept themselves and one another for who they are, not just who they appear to be.

This study guide refers to the Kindle eBook edition of the text.

Content Warning: This text features discussions of domestic violence, addiction, gun violence, and suicidal ideation.

The Bodyguard begins with Hannah returning from her mother’s funeral and feeling stuck in her hometown of Houston, Texas, where she is unwillingly taking bereavement leave from her job as a bodyguard. Hannah wants nothing more than to keep working so she does not have to think about her mother’s and her own life in Houston, but things get worse once she learns that her boss, Glenn, has removed her from an upcoming assignment in Madrid. The night after the funeral, her boyfriend Robby, who is also a bodyguard, breaks up with her and starts dating her best friend Taylor during the Madrid assignment. While dealing with the triple blow of losing her mother, her boyfriend, and her best friend within the space of a month, Hannah gets her next assignment. Although Hannah is appalled that assignment requires her to stay in Houston, all her co-workers are excited to learn that she will be protecting the ultra-famous movie star, Jack Stapleton.

When Hannah meets Jack, she learns that he did not want a bodyguard because he is visiting his sick mother, whom he does not want to worry further by telling her about any threats to his security. To avoid this issue, Jack comes up with the idea to have Hannah pretend to be his girlfriend so that his family will not know that she is his bodyguard. However, his plan is complicated when his mother, Connie, invites Jack, Hannah, and Jack’s estranged brother, Hank, to stay at their family’s ranch for a month. At the ranch, tensions are high between the brothers, as Hank blames Jack for his involvement in the death of their younger brother a few years earlier.

Though Hannah and Jack continue to argue over their unwanted circumstances, Hannah feels that she is growing closer to Jack and worries that she will start revealing personal information to her client. Hannah also starts to get closer to Connie and Jack’s father, Doc, as she wishes she had parents like theirs. She begins to open up to Jack about her past, including her father, who left her when she was seven, and her mother, who started drinking and dating violent men afterward. Hannah also becomes a source of comfort for Jack, especially when Connie is rushed to the hospital and pictures of Jack in Houston surface for the first time, heightening the threat to his security. Although she knows that Jack’s shows of affection are not real, Hannah begins to be convinced by his acting and starts to believe that he might actually have feelings for her. However, after Robby ridicules her for this belief, she attempts to keep her distance from Jack and avoids becoming emotionally invested in their feigned relationship.

One night, Hannah comforts Jack after he has one of his recurring nightmares about driving off a bridge and drowning. Jack tells her that the dream essentially details what happened during the car accident that killed his brother, except that in the dream, Jack is always the one to drown. When pictures that show Hannah and Jack together surface online, a stalker of Jack’s starts to make threats on Hannah’s life, believing that she is his new girlfriend. Glenn plans to pull Hannah off the job and send her into hiding immediately, telling her to explain the truth to Jack’s family and leave that night. Jack and Hannah reveal to the Stapletons that they are not actually dating and that Hannah is Jack’s bodyguard. While Connie and Doc cannot believe this because they are convinced that the two of them are in love, Hank is angry at Jack for putting his family in potential danger without telling them. Also angry, Jack admits that he was not the one driving during his brother’s accident as everyone suspected, but that his brother had been driving drunk and made Jack promise not to tell their family. After this revelation, the brothers begin to reconcile, and Hannah leaves shortly afterward. Her parting from Jack is awkward and professional, but Jack promises that he will sincerely miss her.

Back in Houston, Hannah settles into the life from which she had been hiding. A few days after leaving Jack with his family, she comes across a viral video of him with Kennedy Monroe, another movie star the public assumes he is dating. In the video, Kennedy asks Jack to marry her, and then the video abruptly cuts off. Hannah panics about Jack’s possible engagement and also about the security threat that the video poses, but Jack later calls Hannah to tell her that the video is part of a scheme that Glenn’s team devised to catch and arrest the stalker that threatened Hannah’s life. The plan works and because neither of their lives is at risk any longer, Jack invites Hannah to spend Thanksgiving with his family. At Thanksgiving dinner, after Kennedy humiliates Hannah, Jack and Hannah confess their feelings for one another, and Jack officially asks Hannah out on a date.

However, Jack acts strange and cold when he greets Hannah for their date. Although she is deeply hurt, Hannah senses that something is wrong with Jack. Checking his security footage, she realizes that he has been taken hostage by a gunman. Hannah convinces the gunman—who had been posing as Jack’s stalker when he sent death threats to Hannah—not to kill himself or Jack. By convincing the attacker that his life is worth living, even if he feels unlovable, Hannah also learns that she, too, needs to love herself and to let herself be loved by others. After surviving this attack, Jack and Hannah get married on his family’s ranch, where he learns to forgive himself for his brother’s death and she learns that she deserves love as much as anyone else.