Most of the criticism I’ve seen about this book was about how the fmc is unlikable. I actually really liked her. I think a lot of rom coms have two dimensional characters, the main character has a quirk and a problem and the love interest helps her solve that problem. This book had such a well rounded fmc, she’s not perfect, she’s not selfless, she’s a real person going through a hard time and finding herself looking at life in a whole new way. There’s interesting conversations about grief and betrayal. I loved our live interest, he’s such a kind soul. The chemistry was believable and electric. The problems the fmc work through are interesting and real. She has a lot of character growth and reflection. By far one of my favorite romances of the year.

As a huge Katherine Center fan, I was beyond excited to get the opportunity to read her newest novel before its publication. I always love her characters as they have hilarious banter with one another and feel like “real people”. Unfortunately, compared to this author’s other books, I was not impressed with this one. There is a plot twist that is crucial to the story’s development that I figured out very early in the novel. I would recommend Things You Save In A Fire, another title by Center, over this one.

Such a unique take on a story! The plot of it centers around a woman who can't recognize faces. She knows they have one, she can see everything around her but her brain doesn't compute the face. Which is not ideal, as she is a portrait painter. She begins to enlist coping mechanisms and going on about her life. Determined, she won't let this temporary setback deter her.

She begins to fall for two guys, her vet and a guy in her building. While she is grappling with that, she has to deal with her twisted step sister whose only goal in life is to make hers miserable. She does what she can to finish her portrait painting for a contest.

I loved the premise of this book. It is so different than anything I usually read. Yes, it is a romance. Yes, it has a bit of dramedy. But the whole plot of it, is amazingly different. I loved this book so much! You get to know these characters based on their personalities! So well done!

HELLO STRANGER by Katherine Center (Patti Murin, Narrator)

Sadie is a struggling portrait artist who has lost the ability to see faces. (acquired apperceptive prosopagnosia, or face blindness). “As Sadie tries to save her career, confront her haunting past, and handle falling in love with two different guys, she realizes that happiness can be found in the places—and people— you least expect.”

RomCom done right is a joy, and this one was done right! Yes, there is an easily corrected miscommunication. Yes, there is some mistaken identity and some melodrama. Yes, I knew how it would end. Yes, the evil stepsister was over-the-top, but in a fun way (and you knew she would get her comeuppance!).

But as Center explains in her Author’s Note, that’s not predictability. It’s anticipation. We read romances to smile, feel good, know how it will end, and be rewarded. It’s why we re-watch movies and tv shows we love. It’s comfort. Pure comfort.

This was my favorite by Center so far. It was joyful and fun, with the added benefit of learning something new (face blindness in this case). Her novels are as happy as her covers.

I was also delighted by the narrator! Her delivery was the frosting on an already delicious cake. Each character’s voice was distinctive (Sue was my favorite), making the story fly faster than a roller skater listening to disco.

QOTD: Can you roller skate? Do you have any tricks?

Thanks, NetGalley, St. Martin’s Press, and Macmillan Audio, for the DRC and ALC. US Pub Date: 11 Jul 23

This book was darling and had the most unique premise of a romance book that I've ever read and spoke deeply to my neuroscience nerd heart. The very obvious twist (to the reader) was incredibly amusing to experience through the lense of Sadie, our narrator and female love interest.

*Thank you to NetGalley and publishers for an ARC of this book

As a enthusiast of reading, I'm always anticipating new books from one of my favorite Authors, Katherine Center. Her newest novel "Hello Stranger" has been added to my list of recommended books to all avid readers. I love how she always captures a realistic love that shows struggles and overcoming things to find our own kinds of happiness.

Not only is the illustrations on the cover beautiful the content has you yearning to know what is going to happen to the beloved character Sadie. Sadie suffers from an event that leaves her coping with a strange condition of "Facial blindness". Facial blindness is a condition that all faces are no longer recognizable. Learning to navigate through daily life without the ability to decipher faces has given her a unique opportunity to understand life. Living with this altered perceptions makes her see thing through a different prepective treating everyone as though they are no longer strangers. I found Sadie relatable and I truly enjoyed taking this journey through her life.

July 11, 2023 is the publishing date for Hello Stranger; this can soon become one of your new favorites. Mark it down as a must read right now.

I'm so thankful for Netgalley,
Katherine Center
and St. Martin's Press for the early copy of this wonderful book for an honest review.

Sadie is a portrait artist who undergoes brain surgery which results in prosopagnosia (facial blindness). This complicates her personally and potentially professionally since she's a finalist in an art competition that could change her life. Now simple interactions become complicated, and Sadie must learn to read body cues and speech patterns to decipher who she's speaking to. To add to her stress, she finds herself attracted to two men. Naturally.

It's an interesting premise, particularly the facial blindness aspect and I enjoyed the bits of humour that Center adds in this very-light-on-the-romance story which has no spice but an endearing male lead.

I loved Center's The Bodyguard, but I was surprised that this book fell flat for me. It felt like it never quite got going and had a repetitive feel because Center overexplains her plot, there's too much miscommunication and readers are stuck inside Sadie's head which is not a great place to be.

Sadie is immature, whiny and takes waaaay too long to figure things out. For me, the plot was clear from the start and required me to suspend disbelief far outside my comfort zone with insta-love, insta-forgiveness and an over-the-top, straight from Satan character who should have gotten a swift and hearty comeuppance.

While I'm grateful that this book taught me about prosopagnosia, I didn't enjoy how the story was executed. I like a HEA (happily ever after) but this story has little depth and no surprises for the reader. I'm in the minority with this book so if you want a very light book that's easy to pick up and put down while you're poolside this summer, then you may enjoy it more than I did.

Disclaimer: My sincere thanks to St Martin's Press for the advanced copy of this book which was provided in exchange for my honest review.

The idea of face blindness is something I’ve never read about before and honestly loved reading from the perspective of someone, especially a portrait artist, who was diagnosed with it.

I found myself totally invested in this main characters life, and went through all the emotions she did. From losing her ability to see faces, dealing with a literal evil stepsister, to losing the little family she has left, I felt her heartbreak while reading.

Then comes along the love interest(s). At first I thought it was your typical love story but BOY WAS I WRONG. When there was conflict between the two main love interests, I was so confused why. When you find out the reason for it…prepare to be absolutely mind-blown 🤯

After seeing the twist and how this story ended, I knew it was a an immediate 5⭐️. Absolutely loved this and can’t wait to grab myself a physical copy!

Hello Stranger is my first Kathrine Center novel. Comfy cozy, light, heartwarming, fuzzy feelings aplenty! The plot was creative, you do have to suspend disbelief a little but overall I found this to be any enjoyable read. Sadie is a portrait artist on the cusp of her big break. She is a finalist in a prestigious art competition that will put her name on the map. She ends up in the hospital and after surgery she is diagnosed with prosopagnosia or “acquired face blindness.” She is now a portrait artist who can’t see faces with only one month to paint the best portrait of her life. Sadie is a complex but mostly likeable main character. She has been burned by the people closest to her, experienced the loss of a parent, and now is dealing with medical trauma. Because of her past, she has a hard time asking for help. As someone who has experienced my own losses, Center handled Sadie’s and her dad’s grief in such an authentic and heartbreaking way. The romance aspect of the story was so sweet, and the couple had great banter.

Thank you, St. Martin’s Press and NetGalley for the opportunity to read this ARC!

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center is a novel that blew me away. The premise for this book is so unique and it really creates an unusual plot that works perfectly in this romance. The author did impeccable research on medical conditions to make this book realistic and interesting. Great book overall! I received a digital copy of this book from the publisher with no obligations. These opinions are entirely my own.

I honestly do not know what I would do if I lost my ability to see faces.

Sadie Montgomery is on the brink of getting what she has ever wanted out of her career when tragedy strikes. She has a tumor that has been causing her to have seizures. The latest one almost got her killed if it weren't for a handsome stranger who pushed her out of her way. There is a lot resting on her eyes to get her everything she has ever wanted but the question is whether or not her ability to see faces will return in time to get her there.

What this book has:
~Single POV
~Disability Representation
~A Hilarious Misunderstanding
~Redemption
~Slow Burn
~A Slight Cinderella Retelling

Thank you so much to Katherine Center, Net Galley, and St. Martin's Press for the opportunity to read this book.

Hello Stranger by @katherinecenter was another fun, delightful book from this author. I’ve only read one another by her and enjoyed them both thus far!

Sadie is an artist who just got accepted into a competition near and dear to her heart. Weeks before the North American Portrait Society competition, she gets into an accident which triggers something in her brain called face blindness. Yep, she can no longer see the faces of the people she’s talking to. Talk about inconvenient. To top it off, she’s in the midst of getting to know a few potential suitors and doesn’t know what they look like.

Here’s the thing, this was a bit outlandish, unlikely, and at times, predictable. And the author acknowledges that in her note at the end. But it was engaging, fun, and I liked the characters. In rom-coms and romances, it really comes down to that. It lightened my heart and gave me the serotonin boost I was looking for. Katherine Center is definitely an author I put on my list to pick up for their new debuts and their backlist.

Thanks to @stmartinspress for the advanced ebook via @netgalley and @macmillan.audio for the audiobook copy. Hello Stranger comes out July 11th!

Hello Stranger instantly captured my heart and held it tightly until the very last page. The story revolves around Sadie, a resilient and relatable character who went on a journey through this book. Experiencing Sadie’s world, being drawn into her struggles, her triumphs, and seeing her personal growth really resonated with me.

One of this story's standout features was its realistic portrayal of face blindness, a condition that profoundly affects Sadie’s life after a chain of unfortunate events. Katherine Center did a lot of research and her attention to detail to paint a vivid picture of the challenges faced by Sadie, evoked genuine empathy. Through Sadie’s experience, I gained a newfound understanding of the daily obstacles and emotional complexities that accompany this condition.

Hello Stranger also weaved a captivating romantic element into the narrative. A love triangle emerges, which immerses the reader in a whirlwind of emotions and conflicting desires. The story navigates the complexities of love, highlighting the raw vulnerability and difficult choices faced by Sadie and the two characters who take up space in her heart. It adds a layer of tension as well as the anticipation that keeps you eagerly turning the page.

I look forward to reading the rest of Katherine Center’s backlist and will absolutely be picking up all of her future releases. This book gave me the five-star feeling so early and that feeling never went away!

It was an HONOR to receive this ARC on NetGalley. Katherine Center is one of my favorite romance writers because of her way at handling grief and humor, Hello Stranger being no exception. Full review is on goodreads as if 6/2123, this version I took out the spoilers.

This book follows Sadie after she suffers a brain injury and becomes face blind. While many people live with face blindness, acquired face blindness changes your ability to recognize and interact with people and Sadie is forced to rethink everything she knows - especially as an artist who draws portraits.

A few aspects I truly loved about this book:
- Sadie’s approach to her moms birthday every year and dealing with grief
- The concept of being nice to someone because you don’t know if they are a stranger or not
- Friends forgetting what you are going through despite the constant reminders - a very harsh reality when dealing with new health problems
- Feeling like a burden and being afraid to ask for help

A few of my favorite quotes:
- “Hes kind of like that but with croissants.”
- “Did it make me miss my mom? You bet. But the delight of it - the absolute blissful, embodied pleasure of it - made it okay somehow. I felt that familiar ache of longing, but now mixed with something new. Joy, maybe.”
- “It takes a certain kind of courage to be brave in love.”

Finally, this is my first Katherine Center book I’m reading and not seeing a review/rating from mom first. I miss my mom so much and making my way through all of Katherine Centers books has been a way to feel close to her. Here’s to a new journey and being brave.

Sadie is a portrait artist who has just been diagnosed with face blindness. She also has just been announced as a finalist in an elite portrait competition. As Sadie struggles to deal with her situation, her family, etc, she meets two very different men. She must learn to find her way.

I learned so much from reading this book! I had vaguely heard of face blindness before, but this book really educated me. I could not put this book down as I read Sadie's journey. I needed to know if she was going to be okay. I needed to know how she was going to deal with the stepmonsters. AND I needed to know if she was going to choose Joe. Joe, who won my heart. I feel as though he won Sadie's as well, but the vet was the safe option. Sadie needed the safe option since everything was so unsure for her.

This book will capture your heart and soul. It's not just a love story, but it's a story of survival and hope.

Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for this ARC! All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Another great romance from Katherine Center. I love how her books always have a unique take on falling in love.
In this story, Sadie ends up with a medical condition where she cannot properly see or recognize faces - they look like puzzle pieces to her. I really enjoyed learning more about this condition I'd been unaware of. In addition to causing a huge problem in her career as a portrait painter, she falls for two men at the same time but doesn't totally know what they look like. Dr. Oliver is her new veterinarian who she decides she is destined to marry, but Joe is the bowling jacket wearing guy in her building, and she gets more intrigued by him every time they see each other.
Funny moments, amazing side characters, lots of color and life. Hello Stranger also makes you think about all the things you take for granted or don't fully actually see even when you're looking at them. Katherine Center's books come with all the feels, but overall end up leaving me happy and smiling.

Sadie has an accident that leads to brain surgery that gives her face blindness. She's trying to make it as a portrait artist (of course), so this really makes her job impossible. Throw in two love interests- her hot vet and a questionable guy, Joe, in her building and some complicated family relationships.

Unfortunately, I love Katherine Center books, but not this one. I thought this premise was completely unbelievable and didn't like the characters or the ill-advised decisions they made. They often seemed like a caricature of themselves. This is fine for a time filling book, but I wanted more. Center has set the bar too high with her other books! Maybe the next one will be better.

Thank you to Netgalley for the advance copy for review.

Hello Stranger was a refreshing romance that was delightfully different from anything I've read before, and it was such a pleasure to read that I couldn't put it down. Sadie's character growth throughout the story felt very natural and her internal world felt so vivid I almost experienced a visceral connection to her and how she was seeing the world, which unexpectedly made me invested in her story from the start. The resonance she had with her art and how that tied to her late mother added a depth to the story that made it both heartfelt and heartbreaking, an interesting dynamic that only emphasized how Sadie was struggling to see the gray areas in her life rather than only the extremes of black-and-white thinking she was so used to. Her relationship with Joe was everything it needed to be and it was so wholesome with scenes that warmed my heart and felt authentic and wonderfully imaginative, never feeling like it was excessively predictable. I had so many questions throughout that were satisfyingly answered and the story came full circle in the most perfect way (under the stars, no less). I loved every minute of this story and these characters and it will probably be something I'd love to reread again and again. Easy 5 stars!

I am absolutely in love with this book. In the interest of a spoiler-free review, I’m changing a few tactics on my usual review formula. I refuse to spoil anything about this story or the love interests, so instead I will focus on the FMC, who tells the story in first person narration,, and the incredibly masterful storytelling by Katherine Center. I didn’t read the synopsis before diving in, and I REALLY encourage you to go in blind as well.

The story revolves around Sadie, a portrait artist whose ability to see the world around her changes dramatically just when she gets her big break, and I absolutely adore her. She is a fiercely independent person with a past, and because of this past, she is determines to never need any help, except for a few exceptions from her inner circle. Perhaps because she’s an artist, and because her perceptions of the world around her change, I found myself obsessing over the way she describes this new strange place she finds herself in, and how incredibly isolating this journey is for her. I also found her reaction to the ordeal, the mistakes she makes along the way, and her response to adversity incredibly relatable and human.

I want to champion how incredibly well written, entertaining, swoony, thought-provoking, infuriating (there’s an evil step-sister) and endearing this story is. It is such an interesting story, such an interesting trauma, that naturally create interesting interactions, connections (or disconnections as the case may be). And because it is told from Sadie’s point of view, you only have the information that she has, and are left, as she is, to wonder about who these characters are that are coming into her world at such a turbulent time. Characters that I want to love and swoon over as much as Sadie does, but have to navigate in new ways.

There is an absolute meticulous care to the way this story unfolds, and I enjoyed every part of it.

Thank you to Macmillan Audio and NetGalley for this Advanced Reader Copy. My review and opinions are my own.

Thanks so much to Katherine Center, St Martin's Press, and NetGalley for the opportunity to read an advance copy of this book. All opinions are my own.

Ok so apparently Katherine Center is my go-to author any time I need to be forcibly removed from the slumpiest of reading slumps. I read this book in 24 hours! I haven't finished a book and enjoyed it in over three weeks! I'm on cloud nine right now. But also, Katherine, I sad and happy cried for pretty much the last 25% so thanks a lot for that.

Spoiler-free!

Anywho, this story follows Sadie Montgomery, who meets a cute guy at a grocery store shortly before her life is changed forever. After suffering a nonconvulsive seizure in the middle of the street just outside her apartment, she learns of a brain abnormality that could kill her without prompt surgery to remove it. The problem is, she's been parading around her father as a successful artist for years, but her big break is a portrait due in six weeks at the most prestigious art contest she's ever entered. As a top-ten finalist, she can't have brain surgery now. Though her father is ever absent in her life, he shows up and demands her surgery immediately, pulling his doctor strings to schedule it right away. Upon waking from the surgery, Sadie can no longer see faces.

Navigating this illness in Sadie's thoughts is incredibly interesting and I felt for her throughout the whole book. I saw way too much of myself in her relationship with her father, her headstrong determination to always be ok, her stubbornness, and honestly her loneliness even in the midst of "friends." I hated Parker, obviously, but I also hated Sue. She's such a typical kind-of friend that it hurts how accurate her character is portrayed.

Without spoiling absolutely everything, I will just say that I felt the entire range of emotions while reading this book and I'm not even mad about it. I appreciate that it has forced me to shift my perspective on life to focus on the good things, how "you can either pretend to be okay or you can actually be okay, but you can't do both," how it portrayed the miscommunication trope in a way that was a lot more like misperception and therefore a lot more bearable, how I anticipated every moment of the ending but was totally sucked in to find out how we would get there.

Honestly, I was about to give this story 4-4.5 stars, but after reading the Author's Note, it's a 5 star read from me. I loved the Author's Note and I think it reflects the message we get in The True Love Experiment, which is that romance as a genre is often deeply misunderstood and strongly marginalized even though it is the only genre where you get to expect that HEA. But for some reason we often rate them harsher and expect more realistic things from them, while we devour reality TV and zombie movies and everything else.

TLDR; Katherine Center is at it again and I love it. I had a great time and genuinely could not put this book down. It is unique and challenging and heart-wrenching and heart-warming.