This is such an amazing story. I had requested the book a few months ago and had not re-read the blurb until after I finished so I was going in blind (didn’t realize that pun when I typed it!). The story of how Sadie developed a form of face blindness and the details of it were interesting. Even more so is the fact that she’s a portrait artist. As she struggles with this massive change in her life, I felt a bit claustrophobic almost as if I couldn’t see and was vulnerable. Sadie could definitely see things; she just couldn’t see an entire face.

There is just so much to this story with losses, life changes, bullying, falling in love and more and then realize everything isn’t as it seems. Sadie learns to deflect so that very few people realize she can’t see their faces. She begins to rely on the voices, gait, hair styles, etc., and yet even those clues end up causing confusion also.

There are some truly funny parts where Sadie overhears a man in her building elevator talking and the story is NOTHING like the true details. The last chapter was almost who/what/when/where mixed up confusion on the truth, while not discounting the facial blindness, but communication is definitely important.

Her landlords, Mr. and Mrs. Kim and their daughter Sue, are true family to her. She also has her elderly dog Peanut and is almost frantic to keep him well and in her life as the almost only stable thing in her life. Meeting Dr. Addison, the vet who helps Peanut recuperate and Joe, who lives in her building and seems to be helping everyone starts off high hopes of romance.

I love to read and read almost every day from various types of romance, mystery, history and sometimes I just need a change. This story was so unique – it wasn’t just about loss or romance or struggles and was sad when I finished it. Even with the sad parts it was just an uplifting and heartwarming story and I just felt so hopeful at the end. The author’s notes should not be missed!

Thanks to the author, publisher and Netgalley for the opportunity to read this new work. I greatly enjoyed the story, highly recommend, and look forward to reading Ms. Center’s backlist.

This is a book you will not want to miss. I had never heard of the facial recognition disease called proosopagnosia where the brain no longer recognized faces and I really learned a lot while being totally entertained with the story. I loved all the quirkiness of the characters and how carefully each was woven into the fabric of a delightful story. I laughed out loud all through the book. Sadie is a portrait artist trying to win a contest that could make her career. She struggles with the disease while dealing with family, friends and stranger and a loveable dog. How can she do portraits when she cannot see faces? You will just have to read this to find out. You will not be disappointed.

I wish to thank NetGalley and St Martin’s Press, for allowing me to read an advanced copy of this book. I have voluntarily read and reviewed it. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

Katherine Center never misses. Heartfelt, hopeful, and sweet. This story was wonderfully emotional and gave me all the feel good tropes without having felt like I’d read the book before.

Sadie is a portrait artist, who unknowingly suffers a brain condition and suddenly looses her ability to recognize faces. First off, despite the irony of the situation, this is handled believably and with gravity. The build of the story’s premise is slow but doesn’t feel it. The humor instilled in Sadie’s perspective is a joy.

Katherine Center knows how to write a book, her writing style is magnificent.

There are so many things I love about this book starting with the cover its gorgeous! We are introduced to Sadie a young adult in the throws of trying to figure out where and what she is doing with her life. She is an aspiring artist who is following in the footsteps of her late mother. She wins an opportunity to participate in a one in a lifetime art show when the unthinkable happens and she is in an accident. At first I struggled to connect to Sadie a little, I am not one to enjoy someone who isn't much of a fighter but by the end I really enjoyed the characters in this book. I don't want to spoil the ending for anyone but Joe, I loved Joe! I love how the author is able to tell a wonderful story of love and romance without filling it with smut. Sometimes I feel like smut overtakes the skill it takes to write a good romance and Katherine is able to pull you in and make your heartbeat I also love how the book reminds us to see with more than our eyes.

The only con I can mention is the story is a little slow, it takes a while to get to the good stuff. The heart moving good stuff but its there and its worth it.

Katherine Center is one of my all time favorite authors and she did it again with this one! Thank you to St Martins Press and NetGalley for providing me a digital ARC of this book in exchange for my honest review.

I can only imagine the fun the author had researching and writing this book; the twist at the even I eventually saw coming, but was 100% worth it. The only character I had a hard time believing was the stepsister. Otherwise, thoroughly enjoyed this book!

Thanks to the publisher & Netgalley for the complimentary e-ARC. All opinions provided are my own.

Hello Stranger by Katherine Center is one of those books where I really like some things but don’t like others & feel like I could talk at length about both.

There was one part of this book that had me teary eyed—& I’m RARELY like that while reading—but then there are parts that had me internally going like this .

So maybe a mixed bag response ;) .

What I love most about Katherine Center’s writing is how direct & approachable the narration style is & also how it isn’t afraid to delve into emotions.

Sadie, the protagonist of this book, has a lot of emotions to parse through—she’s a portrait artist who is close to estranged from her father and who has to have a brain surgery that results in her having face blindness for the foreseeable future.

Sadie’s journey has moments that really work for me, that feel as luminescent as Sadie herself, & then moments in the plot that I didn’t totally buy, that aren’t convincing to me.

So in the end I’m giving this one 3.5 ️⭐️ & calling it a day ;).

3.5⭐️. Out 07/11.

CWs: Grief over loss of mom. Toxic stepsister. Basically estranged from father & she learns that at one point he blamed her for her mother’s passing. Nonconvulsive seizure; recovery from brain surgery; face blindness.

[ID: Jess, a white woman wearing a raspberry shirt & a striped skirt, holds the ebook in front of a tree & an ivy patch.]

I never thought I would like a Katherine Center book MORE than I liked her book The Bodyguard, but Hello Stranger has surprised me in the best of ways! I really enjoyed reading this one!

Sadie is a portrait artist who experiences “face blindness” and can no longer see faces properly due to a complication with her brain surgery. And this led to so much of a journey for us to read along. I loved watching her grow into a more confident person, despite her disability. Her friendship with Joe was so wholesome and I loved watching it develop into a romantic one.

The Kim’s are the sweetest/funniest human beings on the planet and I absolutely loved them. Top tier side characters for sure. Also the twist at the end didn’t surprise me, but was still cute!

Overall, I loved this book. I loved Sadie and I loved Joe! I would highly recommend this one!

🤍 Thank you so much to the publisher @stmartinspress & @netgalley for this advanced reader copy!

⚠️TW: bullying, death of parent, medical content, gaslighting, panic attacks/disorders, grief, suicide attempt, fatphobia, infidelity

Sadie thinks her art career is starting to take off, she is a finalist in a portrait contest and her friends want to celebrate. An accident leads to surgery which leads to face blindness, now Sadie doesn't recognize faces and her deadline for the contest is quickly approaching. Sadie has to figure out how to navigate her new reality when she doesn't recognize anyone and doesn't want anyone to know. How is she going to complete a portrait when she can't see anyone. A story of learning to see in new ways and trusting people.

This book was so fun! A portrait artist suddenly diagnosed with face blindness right as she has to paint the perfect portrait for the final round of a prestigious art competition is such a fun way to start this book. Watching her learn to adapt to her new disability was inspiring, and her struggles with trying to date while not always knowing who was around her was so fun! Katherine Center writes incredible romances with fast pacing, engaging characters, funny plot twists, and the perfect amount of tension! I have loved every book I have read by her and can't wait to read more!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review!

This is classic Katherine Center: witty banter, an extremely likeable and self-deprecating protagonist, a dream guy, and a situation where many things conspire to keep our main characters apart, but they are of course united in love by the end. Loved it.

Book: Hello Stranger
Author: Katherine Center
Genre: Romance
Places Featured: United States
Review Score: ⭐️⭐️⭐️1/2 (rounded up)
Review: Sadie Montgomery is an artist struggling with a lot more than just art–her mother died when she was young, her beloved dog is sick, her stepsister torments her, the relationship with her father is strained, and she’s so broke she’s living in a “hovel” that’s actually her art studio owned by her best friend’s parents. And just to make things really bad–she needs brain surgery and ends up with a possibly/hopefully temporary case of face blindness. (And how does a portrait artist enter the contest of her dreams with face blindness?) Two men do appear in her life, though, that give her a little bit of hope. I really liked Sadie and I liked her relationship with Joe. Katherine Center has a knack for writing likable believable female characters who are struggling with relatable feelings and although Sadie’s problems are a little over-the-top and the “twist” was VERY predictable, it's still an enjoyable love story.

Love isn’t blind, it’s just a little blurry.

Sadie Montgomery never saw what was coming . . . Literally! One minute she’s celebrating the biggest achievement of her life―placing as a finalist in the North American Portrait Society competition―the next, she’s lying in a hospital bed diagnosed with a “probably temporary” condition known as face blindness. She can see, but every face she looks at is now a jumbled puzzle of disconnected features. Imagine trying to read a book upside down and in another language. This is Sadie’s new reality with every face she sees.

But, as she struggles to cope, hang on to her artistic dream, work through major family issues, and take care of her beloved dog, Peanut, she falls into―love? Lust? A temporary obsession to distract from the real problems in her life?―with not one man but two very different ones. The timing couldn’t be worse.

If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to find her way. But perceiving anything clearly right now seems impossible. Even though there are things we can only find when we aren’t looking. And there are people who show up when we least expect them. And there are always, always other ways of seeing.



an interior journey thoughts

From the very beginning of Hello Stranger, I was caught up in the whirlwind of confusion that now marks the life of Sadie Montgomery, an artist whose life has been literally turned askew.

Rapidly turning the pages, I couldn’t wait to see what would happen next. Face blindness couldn’t have happened at a worse time for our heroine as she struggles to make sense of the world around her, while also trying to keep her enemies at bay. Enemies in her own family, like her stepsister and stepmother. Could anyone be less deserving of the mayhem these characters create?

Would Sadie find a way to turn her life right again? How do the men in her life seemingly turn awry as well? I loved this book and can’t wait to see what the author brings us next. 5 stars.

***My e-ARC came from the publisher via NetGalley.

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🥰 All the F E E L S Tuesday featuring “Hello Stranger” by Katherine Center

BOOK REVIEW: 🖤🖤🖤🖤/5

Sadie Montgomery is a struggling (but talented) portrait artist who is broke and doing her best to get by. She is an ex premed student who decided to follow her dreams and her deceased mom’s footsteps of being an artist!

However, Sadie has big news .. she has entered a big portrait contest and has made it into the top ten finalists! The grand prize is $10,000 which would change her life! On her way to buy celebratory wine for a party, she blacks out and ends up in the hospital. She has a serious genetic brain condition and needs surgery right away! The surgery goes well …. except that some swelling has caused a case of face blindness. Is it temporary?? Or will she live with this forever??

Sadie must learn to cope with this face blindness and put all her focus in prepping for the big competition!

This was my very first Katherine Center book and I cannot wait to pick up more after seeing so many amazing reviews! Thank you so much to @katherinecenter @stmartinspress @netgalley for my advanced digital copy in exchange for my honest review! This book releases on July 11, 2023!

In the author's note to Hello Stranger, Katherine Center writes that she "write[s] stories about things getting better--about people healing from hard things, and trying to connect, and working like hell to become the best versions of themselves, despite it all." I agree that that's a constant among her books, and I think it's an excellent goal for a novel. I LIKE seeing people get better; that's one of the reasons I turn to Center's novels again and again. Sadie, the central character of this novel, has a lot to recover from--she's still mourning the sudden death of her mother when she was a teenager and the subsequent shredding of her family, she's spent years isolating herself from almost everyone, she's struggling to establish herself as an artist (she paints portraits), and just as the novel begins, her life seems about to change dramatically when she places as a finalist in a national painting contest only to have her health impact her life in equally dramatic ways. Abruptly finding out she needs brain surgery, that leaves her with prosopagnosia or face blindness, she doesn't know if she'll be able to return to the art she loves or even complete her painting for the contest or feed herself. The problem is, with a character as successful at separating herself from other people, plus a new difficulty in identifying people, we spend both too much time and not enough with Sadie herself. We get her lack of connection to people, but not enough about the disorientating new ways she perceives the world (which are central to the plot). Maybe because she's so good at not letting herself appear vulnerable even to herself, we don't see much of the challenges of brain injury (just the confusion with particular people), leaving me uncomfortable with the way ability is used in this particular plot. We also don't learn much about the specific ways she navigates the world before (both as an artist and as any particular human). And we see less of the side characters because Sadie has so far to go make those connections (and side characters are often one of the best things in a Katherine Center novel for me). As a result, I didn't feel like we quite earned the book's resolution. I'm ready to read the next Katherine Center novel, but this one didn't quite work for me.

Thanks to the publisher, Netgalley, and the author for my earc in exchange for an honest review. My opinions are all my own.

First let me say that I finished this in one sitting…. I loved the premise of this book. You don’t typically see representation such as this in romance novels. It was nice to see a ch age in the “typical” romance trope. I consume so many romance novels that they can feel mundane and repetitive after a while but this one was not. I really loved how the author told Sadie’s story. I felt that you could really get inside of her head and understand how she was feeling before and after her diagnosis. I loved Sadie and Joes love story and how he so effortlessly helped Sadie even without knowing the full extent of her story.

I will be honest and say that I think I liked The Bodyguard more. I felt like the beginning of this book was slow and took me some time to get into it, but wow, once I got hooked I couldn't stop reading it. Stayed up until 3 am to finish the last 100 or so pages.

I LOVED the characters in the story! I loved the representation of face blindness and the struggles that Sadie felt throughout the whole book. I loved how her mindset changed from helplessness to I am not going to let my face blindness define who I am. I loved how Sue was a sensible friend who never sugarcoated anything for her and how supportive Sue's parents were. This book had SOOO many aspects that I liked, let's not even get into the love interest (Joe has my heart and goes to show what an actually nice guy is). I'm not a re-reader, but I would 100% re-read this book in the future.

Some tropes (he fell first, She is a bit of a grump and he is a bit of a sunshine, Cinderella kind of story with a stepsister and stepmother, Art, Slow burn)

Thank you, NetGalley, Katherine Center, and St Martin's Press for an eARC in exchange for an honest review.

“The more good things you look for, the more you find.”

Thanks to Katherine Center and NetGalley for an ARC of this book!

I absolutely adored this book! The premise was so different from any other romance I’ve read and had me hooked the whole time. I figured out at some point what the “twist” was going to be, but it didn’t make reading any less delightful. The whole book was in parts funny and heartwarming and made for a super speedy read for me, even though Iwould have read far more pages! I also really really loved the authors note at the end, which talks about how romance is stereotyped and how the genre brings joy to people’s lives. Will definitely be reading more Katherine Center from here on!

You can expect: artist FMC, constantly helpful MMC, face blindness, love triangle-ish, a cute dog, portrait painting, closed door romance!
Recommended for fans of: romcoms, Abby Jimenez, Emily Henry, Christina Lauren, Chloe Liese
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CW: brain surgery, abusive stepsister, death of a parent (past, off page)

I was going to give this book 4 starts until I read the author's note and decided to give it 5.

While reading this book, I realized that I have been gravitating toward romance/rom-coms. Why? Probably because I've found myself smiling while reading them, always knowing it will probably have a happy ending and would give me an ending to look forward to.

Rewind to me wanting to give it 4 stars because it was predictable. I remember reading the ending and out loud I said "well that was predictable - but in a good way". Then I read the authors note. Katherine Center literally goes through all of the thoughts I was having. "romance novels don't give you things to dread, they give you things to look forward to" The structure is predictable and knowing you're heading toward a happy ending lets you relax and look forward to better things ahead" "They will say it is predictable - but in a good way" "We should start using anticipation instead of predictable because the love story really created fantastic anticipation"

Well.. that's one way to start looking at things more positively.. which was really the main goal for Sadie after she was diagnosed with acquired prosopagnosia right before the biggest career event of her life. This book takes you through grief, friendships, relationships, and for Sadie, learning about who she really is and who she wants to be. This book was absolutely adorable and another 5 star read from Katherine Center.

I am definitely becoming an ardent fan of Center's work.

I didn't think the story could pull off "face blindness" but I totally bought it.

I can only say that this cute, sleepy sweet book made my week.

Thank you to Netgalley and St. Martin’s Press for providing an eARC for a honest review.

I struggled to get into this book at first, I'm not sure if it was the artsy or medical content, or maybe both, which slowed me down. But after a while I realized that I was rooting for Sadie and Peanut a lot! I needed Sadie to find love, and the twist actually surprised me.