I think love stories are deeply misunderstood—in part, at least, because they don’t work like other stories.
Love stories don’t have happy endings because their authors didn’t know any better. They have happy endings because those endings let readers access a rare and precious kind of emotional bliss that you can only get from having something that matters to look forward to.
Yes, misery is important.
But joy is just as important. The ways we take care of each other matter just as much as the ways we let each other down. Light matters just as much as darkness. Play matters as much as work, and kindness matters as much as cruelty, and hope matters as much as despair.
More so, even.
Because tragedy is a given, but joy is a choice.
Romantic fiction thrived during the pandemic, and there were lots of theories about why. People thought we were lonely. We needed escape. We wanted some laughs.
All true.
But I think, more than that, it’s because love is a form of hope.
We all sense it deep down, I suspect—past the snark and the tough-guy exteriors. Love is healing. It’s nourishing. It’s unapologetically optimistic. It’s the thing that leads us back to the light.
So I write stories about how love does that—about people healing from hard things, and trying to connect, and working like hell to become the best versions of themselves, despite it all. About the genuine emotional courage it takes to love other people, and about the joy that courage can offer us. I hope this story made you laugh. And swoon. I hope it kept you up way too late reading and gave you that blissed-out, longing-laden, tipsy feeling that all the best love stories create. I hope it gave you something to think about, and maybe a new perspective. But what I know for sure is that reading love stories is good for you. That believing in love is believing in hope. And doing that—choosing in this cynical world to be a person who does that—really is doing something that matters.
Acknowledgments
I always panic when it’s time to write acknowledgments because I’m terrified of leaving someone out. Let me not forget to thank my friend Dale Andrews—founding member of our legendary Romantic Book Club of Two—for reading (and loving) early drafts of both The Bodyguard and Hello Stranger.
Many grateful thanks also to my friend of many years Karen Walrond, who so joyfully took the time to teach me about the culture of her home country of Trinidad—even helping me think through Dr. Nicole’s wardrobe and baking me some homemade coconut bread. So much gratitude, also, to my dear friend Sue Sim, for consulting with me on the Korean American character of Sue Kim (who I wound up naming after her). The real-life Sue is one of my all-time favorite people, and she graciously met me for coffee many times—even though we kept getting distracted and talking about our kids. Many grateful thanks as well to Sue’s dad, Mr. Young Kim, for letting me borrow his name.
I must also thank my friend (and vet!) Dr. Alice Anne Dodge, DVM, for letting me spend a day observing behind-the-scenes life in her clinic. My friends Vicky and Tony Estrera kindly let me borrow their last name. Artist Gayle Kabaker let me interview her about portraiture and life as a working painter, and I also found much inspiration in the work of Sargy Mann, an artist who kept painting even after entirely losing his sight. The work of face-blind artist Chuck Close was also fascinating to learn about, and I owe much to the BBC article “Prosopagnosia: The Artist in Search of Her Face.”
Science is not exactly my area of expertise. Huge thanks to Lauren Billings (half of the Christina Lauren writing duo), who saw a post about my researching science-y stuff for this story and DM’ed me to say: “You know I have a Ph.D. in neurobiology, right?” Thanks also to Paula Angus and Elise Bateman for sharing resources about neurology and memory. I also learned much about the brain from neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor’s book My Stroke of Insight. Deep gratitude to Dr. Erin Furr Stimming, professor of neurology at UT Health Houston McGovern Medical School, for letting me interview her—and also referring me to Dr. Mark Dannenbaum of the Department of Neurosurgery of McGovern Medical School so I could ask some very unscientific questions (like “Is it kind of like ice fishing?”) about brain surgery. Both were so generous with their time and so delightful to talk to.
My most extensive research, of course, was on prosopagnosia. I knew very little about the condition when I started, and I had a lot to learn. For that, I owe much to neurologist Dr. Oliver Sacks’s writings about prosopagnosia, a condition that he himself had. I also listened to every episode of Jeff Waters’s podcast FaceBlind—some many times—and found it profoundly helpful.
I could not be more thankful to two people I reached out to cold after hearing them interviewed together on a podcast about face blindness. Dr. Joe DeGutis, assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who also co-runs the Boston Attention and Learning Lab, made time to talk with me and patiently answered many questions. The charming and delightful science writer Sadie Dingfelder, who met Joe while learning about her own prosopagnosia in his lab, also talked with me at length about face blindness. Sadie’s Washington Post article “My Life with Face Blindness” was a massively helpful resource, and I’m so happy that when I described my idea for the plot of this book to her and asked, “Could that happen?” she replied with so much enthusiasm, “That could totally happen!” I’m also beyond grateful to her for taking time to read an early draft of this book.
No discussion of prosopagnosia would be complete without mentioning the very helpful website FaceBlind.org, run jointly by Dartmouth, Harvard, and the University of London—where you can learn much more, and even participate in online research studies.
So many adoring thanks to the good people of St. Martin’s Press—in particular, my brilliant editor, Jen Enderlin; cover designer Olga Grlic; unstoppable publicist Katie Bassel; genius marketers Brant Janeway, Erica Martirano, and Kejana Ayala; and the lovely Christina Lopez. Huge thanks also to my fantastic agent, Helen Breitwieser of Cornerstone Literary, who has stuck with me from the very start.
Many hugs to my family. My astonishingly enthusiastic and supportive husband, Gordon, and my endlessly helpful and encouraging mom, Deborah Detering, are always tied for Most Helpful Superstars when it comes to getting my books written and out there. Thanks to my fun kids, Anna and Thomas, for just being such delightful humans. Much gratitude to my two sisters, Shelley Stein and Lizzie Fletcher, for their support, and to my dad, Bill Pannill, for memorizing “The Walrus and the Carpenter” with me when I was a kid.