This was a well written, great story. Forced to see things, in particular faces, differently due to brain surgery, Sadie Montgomery has normal, panic driven reactions. She is a portrait artist who after brain surgery sees faces as something abstract and not really faces at all. We follow her journey as she copes with this at same time, she is a finalist in an art contest for portrait artists. Also, romance is involved and the way the story unfolds is unexpected, fun and wonderful. I am planning to read more Katherine Center books in the future. Thank you NetGalley for providing the ARC.

* Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the ARC of this book!

I really enjoyed The Bodyguard by Katherine Center and I think I enjoyed this book even more! I found myself really intrigued with this story and I hated having to put the story down for any reason. I enjoyed this story for multiple reasons. It's full of humor, stress, emotion, romance and very cute dog that I just absolutely could not get enough of! The little twist at the end just made everything better (even though, for once, I actually figured things out before it was announced!)

I feel like I had a lot in common with the FMC, Sadie. Each time she spoke about her mother, I could feel how close she was to her mother when she was actually alive and I knew she missed her terribly. It really pulled at my heartstrings and made me miss my own mother that I lost 6 years ago. Sadie also had trouble asking for help which I seem to have the same problem with! Katherine Center sure knows how to write a relatable main character! I also enjoyed the other characters in this book, especially Sadie's best friend, Sue!

Another great book from Katherine Center! Can't wait for the next one!

Sadie seems to have everything going for her. She has just been notified that she is a finalist in a prestigious American Portrait Society competition. The only thing she has to do is paint the perfect portrait of someone. And she only has 8 weeks to do it. What could go wrong? Then she is involved in a freak accident and wakes up in the hospital and can't see faces! Doctors aren't sure if it will be a permanent condition or not. How is she going to be able to paint a portrait if she can't see faces. She has to deal with that. There are family issues that come up and she has to deal with that. How many balls can Sadie juggle at one time?

Sadie has been dealt a rough hand in life. Her mother passed away when she was a kid and her dad ended up remarrying. She wants nothing to do with her step mother or her evil step sister. Her father has been mostly absent from her life, leaving her feeling very alone in the world. She tries to put up a facade that she’s successful and happy, so that no one, especially her “family”, knows the truth. The truth is she’s a struggling artist, living in a hovel that belongs to her friends parents. She finds out she was selected to compete in a coveted portrait competition and hopes she finally might get her lucky break! Except another curve ball comes in when she finds out she has a condition that requires brain surgery. She reluctantly agrees to surgery, only to wake up to discover she has facial blindness [prosopagnosia]. How is she supposed to paint a portrait for the competition when she can no longer decipher faces? She vows to keep this a secret and hopes the issue will resolve as soon as possible.

Her dog ends up coming down with something, which lands her in the local vet office, where she meets Dr. Oliver Addison. She’s immediately drawn to him and is so excited when he asks her out on a date. Meanwhile Sadie’s neighbor, Joe, starts showing up for her in ways she didn’t ask for and he begins to grow on her. Maybe more than she wants to admit. Could one of these relationships end in love?

I enjoyed reading this book. It was easy to breeze through and ended with a twist I wasn’t expecting.

Overall good read. Not my favorite by Katherine Center, but still a worthwhile read.

Thank you to NetGalley + St. Martin’s Press for the ARC. Pub date is set for 7/11/2023.

Hello Stranger is the newest release from Katherine Center and while I’ve always really enjoyed this author’s books in the past, this book right here easily took the cake as my new fav! I cried multiple times reading this book and then again with the author’s note at the end about romance books! This book just meant so much and was perfect!

Sadie is a struggling portrait artist but feels like she got a big break when she lands a coveted spot in a portrait competition! She runs out of her apartment to celebrate by buying some (cheap) wine at the local corner store but realizes while checking out that she totally forgot her wallet. A man behind her in line offers to pay but she declines and rushes off to get her wallet, later she runs into him and realizes he bought her wine anyways for her and even added in a bouquet of flowers to her bag. Aww’ing at the thoughtfulness of it all, she ends up getting hit by a car and rushed to a hospital! While at the hospital, the doctor finds a malformed blood vessel in her brain on the scan and informs her she’ll need brain surgery to fix the issue.

After the successful surgery, Sadie realizes that she is unable to see faces and is told she has face blindness (there is a technical term but that is basically what it is). They’re hoping it is just temporary and will last 2-6 weeks, but Sadie is devastated considering her living is painting portraits! Along the way she ends up finding out about her past, struggles to save her career, deals with her complicated relationships with her family (dad, stepmom, and stepsister), and has a really sweet and helpful guy she wants to get to know more!

The romance was just so so precious and I couldn’t get enough of Sadie and her story! I didn’t find the romance to be a twist, I thought it was clear to see what was going on in the story very early on, but I adored the journey of it all anyways and seeing it all play out. This was easily my favorite by this author and the audio narration in particular was amazing!

Thank you so much to the publisher, St. Martin’s Press for an ARC and MacMillan Audio for an audio ARC via NetGalley. All thoughts in this review are my own. Hello Stranger has a pub date of July 11, 2023!

3.75. i thought the story was really interesting and the premise of it caught me but i was admittedly really stressed the whole book because of sadie’s lack of communication with everyone about what was happening. i know it sets up for the twist at the end but miscommunication is one of my least favorite tropes so i admit it got me stressssssed the whole time. i feel like this is more of a women’s fiction story than a romance novel but i still enjoyed it! thank you netgalley for the advance copy of this novel.

Coincidentally this is the second book I've read this year about a character with face blindness. It's so fascinating! But that aside, I really enjoyed this book. It was a tad predictable and I figured out the ending quite early on, but I still loved seeing how it was all going to play out. Kept me up reading way too late on a work night just to finish it!

This was a very fun and unique storyline. I absolutely loved the concept of the MC losing her ability to see faces and learning how to identify people based on other characteristics and body language. The main character was funny, brave, relatable, and likeable. The fact that she powered through life without being to see any faces was charming and entertaining. The family dynamics were brutal at times! I really hated the stepsister! I was hoping for a redemption arc but the way the author closed out their story worked well for me.

I will say that the miscommunication trope is my least favorite, so I found myself having second-hand embarrassment a handful of times throughout the last quarter once I figured out a few of the plot twists - which I felt were pretty predictable.

Overall this was a fun, quick, quirky read. I think a lot of people will enjoy reading this.

I am not a squealer but I always - without fail - squeal with delight when I have a new Katherine Center book to read. Her books are just so full of promise and joy. In the author’s notes for this, her latest book, Hello Stranger, she talks about predictability vs. anticipation. We like our romances to be predictable – in a good way – but she suggests instead we think of it as anticipation. And she is exactly right. All through the book, even though there are serious heavy events with serious unexpected and possibly unfixable consequences, I was anticipating the happy stuff. The looks, the touches, the shrugs, the sighs.

Sadie Montgomery lost her mom when she was fourteen and everything fell apart and never got put back together. Sadie feels like she’s a failure at everything: being an artist, a daughter, being self-supporting and self-sufficient. She is convinced neediness on her part is the reason, so she’s determined to always, always, always be fine and never need anything or anyone lest she drive them away. She has friends, especially her good friend Sue, but is almost estranged from her father and wacky stepmother, her stepsister is beyond cruel, her art hasn’t taken off like she has hoped, and her love life, what love life? So when she gains entry into an important art contest she thinks, “This is it! I’ve done it, I will show everyone and finally be happy.” Until on the night Sue is giving her a celebratory party and Sadie goes off to buy cheap wine and dog treats for her old, spoiled, precious dog Peanut she freezes in the middle of the street and except for the last-minute Good Samaritan pushing her out of the way is almost run down by an approaching car. What could be worse than that? Well, how about face blindness? The condition that caused her to freeze required surgery and – hallelujah – Sadie is alive. But – whatever the opposite of hallelujah is – faces are now jumbled and Sadie can’t recognize anyone, not even herself in the mirror. Peanut is the only face she can see. It may go away, but maybe it won’t. If she felt entirely alone before . . . .

Katherine Center is at her best, again, with Hello Stranger. She has a gift, a mastery, for taking very serious accidents or diseases or conditions or whatever it is that happens to her characters and while treating those things with the somberness they require, also managing to infuse all that anticipation, joy, and deliciousness into every single page. It might not be a typical happily-ever-after but you know good things are going to happen and you just can’t wait to get to them.

Just open the book and immerse yourself in Sadie and Peanut and Sue, and Joe the Weasel from the elevator and Dr. Addison, the faceless-but-sexy vet who saved Peanut, the sister who keeps sabotaging her, the art, the bursts of joy in the middle of some real fear and sorrow.

There are lots of hints to the mind-blowing surprise but you’ll have to read Hello Stranger a second time to recognize all of them. Come on, that’s what you do with a Katherine Center book, isn’t it? It becomes a lifelong companion to be cherished and revisited, checked-in with every once in a while because it just feels so good. When you read this book the next time (and the next and . . . .) those hints will have full meaning and will have transformed into swoony, hand-on-your-heart, sigh, wipe away a tear, moments. Center is such a competent, capable, talented author to put all those little hints in; it’s all there for you but you can’t figure it out until you know the ending, but why would you want to figure it out anyway? It’s not a mystery, it’s a love story and the best part of a love story is the journey – and the anticipation.

Understanding the hints makes the funny parts even funnier, which is saying a lot since Center’s novels have a lot of funny stuff in them to begin with. And if you don’t ugly-cry while reading this – and every other Katherine Center book – then you belong in a dark, dull room with Sadie’s father, stepmother and evil stepsister.

Hello Stranger is another wonderful addition to your Katherine Center library. The pace picks up at the end and you aren’t trying to figure anything out; you are consumed with “Will they? “Won’t they?” Just sailing along to the totally satisfying ending without knowing what’s coming gives you the read of a lifetime. And can you have multiple reads of a lifetime? The answer is a resounding YES! Just put Katherine Center on your automatic-buy list.

Thanks to St. Martin’s Publishing Group for providing an advance copy of Hello Stranger via NetGalley for my reading pleasure (joy!) and honest review. I voluntarily leave this review and all opinions are my own. I cannot recommend this book and this author enough.

I always look forward to a new Katherine Center book. This one did not disappoint. I loved this book so much.

Sadie Montgomery is a portrait artist. She ruined her relationship with her father to switch majors from medicine to fine arts. Sadie has spent the last 8 years lying about her success to her father and step-mother. However, Sadie finally got her big break, she is finalist in a art contest. Unfortunately Sadie has a mishap and her life is derailed a bit. After nearly getting hit by a car, Sadie is diagnosed with a cavernoma and must have brain surgery. She wants to put it off until after the contest but her dad won't let her. Seems that a cavernoma is what caused her mother's death 14 years ago.

The surgery is a success and Sadie is a model patient until she is about to be released and realizes that she can't see faces. Seems that some swelling from the surgery is causing the part of her brain that recognizes faces to not work. She is diagnosed with acquired apperceptive prosopagnosia aka face blindness. This makes her painting a portrait for the contest nearly impossible.

Sadie has spent the last 14 years not asking for help or admitting that she is not okay. So in her coping with face blindness, she is going to pretent it doesn't exist. She doesn't want to tell anyone. Imagine not being able to recognize people you have know your whole life. Sadie does her best, but her life is a bit of a mess. Her evil step-sister moves into her apartment building, she falls for not one but two men. And painting a portrait without being able to see faces proves to be a near impossible task.

I loved this story and I have to say I cried both sad and happy tears as this book resolved itself. Sadie is a very likable character. She is easy to love and root for. I kept hoping her dad and step-mother would finally see what a horrible person Parker (evil step-sister) truly is. If finally came about but in one of the saddest ways possible. My heart hurt for Sadie so much. I was glad she was redeemed in the eyes of her father and that he works to earn Sadie's forgiveness.

As for the falling for two different men, the way it resolves itself is absolutely my favorite part of this book.

I loved this book so much. It is heartbreaking and heartwarming. I recommend this book to everyone.


Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the ARC of this book. All opinions expressed are my own.

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

Hello Stranger was a very pleasant surprise for me. I had been struggling lately with the romcoms I had been reading, not finding one that fit me but this one totally hooked me. As someone who studied prosopagnosia I was curious to see how it would be portrayed in this book. This book really played with my heartstrings and I loved the focus on how romance is about how the other person treats you and not how visually appealing they are. Parts were heartwarming, and others more angsty, but the book kept a good tonal balance and ended on such a hopeful note that it left me feeling warm. It didn't have the craziest plot twists, and I did anticipate how the ending was going to go but I didn't care! Just getting to the end was the fun part and I was looking for a jaw dropping plot twist.
This was a great read for someone looking for books on heavy topics taken on from a gentle, hopeful approach.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press for the ARC. This book made me laugh, cry and believe in fate. I loved Sadie and Joe. They just had a connection and got one another. This a sweet story of overcoming grief, unexpected illness and a dog named Peanut. A must read.

Katherine Center strikes again with another adorable, laugh-out-loud romance. Sadie is a struggling portrait artist who has finally gotten her big break--the chance to enter a portrait contest with a grand prize of $10,000. But when she suffers a seizure in the middle of traffic, she's left with a rare condition called prosopagnosia....or facial blindness. How is an artist supposed to paint faces when she cannot see them? The main storyline of this novel focuses on Sadie's budding romance with her downstairs neighbor Joe, a man she develops an attraction to without ever seeing. The book has some deeper themes, too, exploring the death of Sadie's mother, the abandonment from her father, and her evil stepsister quite literally from hell (seriously--could Parker have been any worse???) A super cute meet-cute with a twist, Hello Stranger is a nice heartwarming romance that fans of Center will most certainly enjoy .

I am a huge Katherine Center fan, so I was really excited to get an advanced reader copy!

Overall, this was a good rom com read - I was able to finish the audiobook in a few days. It was engaging, funny, emotional, and (of course) had a happy ending. The premise of "face blindness' was interesting and something I haven't read much about before.

I wasn't surprised by the twist and sometimes the plot seemed a bit far-fetched, but oh well - that happens in fiction sometimes!

This wasn't my favorite Katherine Center, but I'll always love anything she writes!

Thank you Netgalley and St. Martin's Press for the gifted copy in exchange for an honest review!

HELLO STRANGER follows Sadie, a young woman who comes out of brain surgery with face blindness, a condition hoped to be temporary. With this condition she isn’t able to recognize any of the faces of those around her, not even her closest friends and family. Making matters even more complicated, Sadie has just been announced as a finalist in a portrait competition, an art which largely relies on the translation of faces into art.

Sadies’ life is further complicated in her relationships. Though she has a supportive BFF, that BFF has a busy life of her own. Her family life is complicated with a strained relationship with her father, and a step sister who lives up to the wicked label. The only face she really recognizes is that of her dog! Sadie doesn’t want to admit to anyone the condition she is in even as she meets and falls for two men she can’t even recognize.

There is something about Katherine Center’s writing that just makes for a cozy read and this definitely lived up to that expectation for me. It was a fun read and one that I could easily fly through. The audio was really well done as well.

I did struggle a bit in this book with Sadie because she definitely could be frustrating. While I could definitely feel the distress she was feeling in this situation, I did find her self-centered nature to be a bit extreme at times. I think it was probably necessary for the route the plot takes, but it did make it a little harder to connect to her. I did also find the wicked step-sister to be a bit over the top for me as well.

While this didn’t wind up being my favorite book by this author, I did still have a lot of fun reading it.

This was a story unlike anything I ever would have expected. What an interesting medical diagnosis. I can't imagine having to live life not being able to see faces. I really enjoyed all the characters in this book aside from Sadie. She was ok, but I really struggled with some of her reluctance to let people in and be more open. It made for drama throughout the book but I just felt, if I was in her situation, it would be exhausting and it was so counterproductive. Joe was incredible. Mr. Kim was the absolute sweetest. Who doesn't love when a pet plays a huge character in a book as well. Overall, I really enjoyed the book and feel grateful to have learned about this very real diagnosis that people experience.

The Author's Note at the end was beautiful!

Wow.. this was so great. I read 'The Bodyguard' by Katherine Center last year & really enjoyed it, so of course I was pumped to read this; but this book blew my expectations out of the water! Definitely my favorite of hers.

Sadie is a portrait artist who finally catching her big break, only to be set back by a medical emergency. I don't want to give too much away; I went into this book almost completely blind & was just DELIGHTED. Equal parts sweet, maddening, poignant, and heartwarming.

Thank you to St. Martin's Press/NetGalley for the ARC of this stunner!!

I really enjoyed this book.

I was unaware that "face blindness" was an actual thing. It was clear that Sadie was truly struggling with this; however, Center writes the with such deprecating humor that it was sometimes hard not to laugh at Sadie's struggles (except for with her step family). I wanted to kick Sadie's step sister in the shin which is exactly what I think Center was going for.

I loved the twist and turns and challenges that were introduced due to the face blindness. Sadie was already in a precarious place in her life, but somehow her life being turned completely upside down because of her accident put things into perspective.

I really just cannot express how heartfelt and enjoyable this book was! I will now seek out all of Center's books.

I absolutely loved this story and especially the character Sadie. It was so different than the average romance. I LOVED the bodyguard and was expecting something similar but this really had be staying up late to see how the story would end. There were moments where I felt Sadie’s genuine frustration about the face blindness because we couldn’t see who she was talking to either! It really kept me guessing on how everything would unfold. Will be reading again!

This was SO enjoyable! I’ve been on a reading slump and this one was a joy to read not not one to trudge through. I’d say it’s a half rom com and half contemporary fiction. Really interesting storyline with the face blindness. I can’t imagine having that at all, especially as a portrait artist! I loved how the story wove through Sadie learning to live with it, and ultimately fall in love (The Joe storyline was 💯❤️). But I also love that through the whole process, she became stronger and more true to herself.

The only thing I didn’t love was that I felt Parker was over the top in her villainess. I think if she was a little more believable, or a little less in the story, it would have been a 5 star for me.

I love this author’s writing style. There’s not a book of hers I won’t read and any time I pick one up, I know I’m in for an enjoyable ride. ❤️