Hello Stranger(102)

As in: “This love story really created a fantastic feeling of anticipation.”

Structurally, thematically, psychologically—love stories create hope and then use it as fuel. Two people meet—and then, over the course of three hundred pages, they move from alone to together. From closed to open. From judgy to understanding. From cruel to compassionate. From needy to fulfilled. From ignored to seen. From misunderstood to appreciated. From lost to found. Predictably.

That’s not a mistake. That’s a guarantee of the genre: Things will get better. And you, the reader, get to be there for it.

It’s a gift the love story gives you.

But no type of story gets more eye rolls than love stories. “They’re so unrealistic,” people say, as they start another zombie apocalypse movie.

What is that? Is it self-protection? Self-loathing? Fear of vulnerability? Is it pretending we don’t care so we aren’t disappointed? Is it some sad, unexamined misogyny that we as a culture really, really need to work on?

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.