A quick and light read with a unique storyline that gave this story a cute twist! The writing style is very fast-paced and witty which makes this book a very easy read. Some of the characters are a little over the top and dramatic and a little more background and history may have been helpful to fully flesh out these characters, but still an enjoyable read!

Once again, Katherine Center plops you in a world and introduces you to characters and next thing you know your heart is swept down the street with them as the walk on by. This is truly a Katherine Center book and yet still so different and original from all the others.

Sadie and Joe were the perfect protagonist. Peanut is a dog-sidekick Disney would have been jealous of. Sue is the best friend everyone needs. And Sadie's family is the perfect evil step-family.

I would have loved to see the storyline develop more for Sadie's family and felt there were some things not fully developed or not yet explored in those relationships but would happily read them in the next book!

Then again, I'd happily read anything Katherine Center wrote and threw my way. Highly recommend this for the whimsical, Disney rom-com lovers and those craving deep connection. This book has it all!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for the advanced copy to review! Review contains some slight spoilers, so be warned!

I'd probably give this book 2.5/5 stars. I hate to say it, but I really didn't enjoy this book. I was expecting a lot after reading and loving The Bodyguard, but this one was just disappointing.

First, I found that the introduction to the main parts of the novel (namely Sadie's face blindness) took way too long to get to. Like 30% of the beginning of the book felt like exposition, which made it really hard to get into the book. It seemed ridiculous to me that "Joe's" wife left him for being *too* helpful. Who does that? It seems like a ludicrous and unrealistic reason for someone to leave their spouse. I also thought the ending was pretty predictable. I guessed it pretty early on in the book, which left me feeling unsatisfied at the end of the novel.

I really wanted to love this book, but there was a lot going against it.

Rating: 3.5 bumped up to a 4 star!

This book was super cute and quite insightful when it comes to a medical diagnosis I knew nothing about!

Sadie Montgomery has had some rough moments in her life ever since her mom passed away, But she finally gets her big break when she gets chosen out of a 1,000 people for a art competition. The winner will receive $100,000. Soon after Sadie gets this news she has a medical emergency happen to her that requires a big surgery. When she wakes up from the surgery Sadie realizes she cannot see faces anymore (a slight complication from the surgery). The doctors assure her it will go away with time but for Sadie her whole career revolves around seeing people's faces, as she is a portrait artist.

Next thing you know her beloved choonks Peanut gets sick and is rushed to the local vet.. Here Sadie meets Dr. Oliver Addison and is instantly in love. From there Sadie goes on a journey between two men, her neighbor Joe and Dr. Addison. Will Sadie be able to choose who she wants to date without seeing their face maybe ever.....

This was my first Katherine Center book and I really liked the small moments throughout the book. Especially Sadie's inner dialogue. I would recommend for a fast read, cute romance, and good banter plus an evil step-sister/mother!

Thank you to NetGalley and St. Martin's press for this ARC in exchange for my honest review! Pub date: July 11,2023

Katherine Center can do no wrong

I loved this book. I thought that Sadie’s character was funny and you rooted for her all the way through the book. I cheered when she stood up to her family. It was great to see her character development. The love story with Joe was a smidge predictable but I loved it anyway.
This was a quick and easy read.

Definitely recommend!

What I liked about this book:
✨ completely unique plot
✨ very sweet friendships and found family
✨ Sadie’s new found confidence
What I didn’t like:
✨ Sadie was super immature.
✨ the romance wasn’t it for me

Loved this book from start to finish. Fell in love with Sadie’s relatable character immediately. From her jaunt down to the corner store, to her perseverance when presented with a very hard diagnosis, to her vulnerability in falling in love while going through a hard time this book intertwined so many different plot
points. It did a wonderful job doing so and pulling them all together in the end. I love Sadie. I love Joe. I love Mr. Kim. And I’d love to see a part two to this wonderful book. Highly recommended for an easy, quick read with real meaning! Thank you, NetGalley and St. Marten’s Press for allowing me to read this book early!

Another wonderful Katherine Center book. At first I wasn't sure where it was going . Then, as I'm figuring it out, it takes a turn . Laugh out loud moments, tug at your heartstrings moments and a love story like no other. Bravo. Katherine for always finding a new angle to keep us going

Funny and a little heartbreaking, but ultimately romantic and life-affirming...I really loved this one.

Sadie's whole life, which honestly hasn't been going that well, gets flipped upside down when she has to have brain surgery and leaves her with face blindness. As a portrait designer who has (at last) just been accepted to a prestigious portrait competition, this is catastrophic.

As Sadie mourns, freaks out, etc, she also meets a very handsome veterinarian (or at least he seems handsome) and befriends a neighbor in her building who is compulsively helpful and maybe not what he seemed during a previous elevator encounter. Meanwhile, Sadie must come to terms with who she is as an artist and deal with the enduring grief of her mother's early death while learning that being an island isn't as great as she led herself to believe.

There is so much humor in this one, but it also has many poignant moments. Sadie's relationship with her dad and step family was tough and well-told. I also thought Katherine Center really nailed her descriptions of face blindness (as I understand it) and I often felt the closed-in-ness of Sadie as she tries to navigate a world where the most familiar thing to her is suddenly jumbled.

And of course, I really enjoyed the love story aspect with her sweet and funny neighbor Joe. It was fascinating to see that unfold when Sadie couldn't see his facial reactions to her.

Oh how much I loved this book! I laughed so many times, out loud so many times to the point my husband asked if I was okay...I cried for Sadie and her big huge problem...finally getting a break and then developing face blindness after have a seizure and having to have brain surgery. I cried for her loss of fatherly relationship and loss of mother. I adored Joe/Oliver so very much and predicted him to be the guy who bought her the wine in the beginning of the story but NEVER would have guessed he was also the vet! And that his name wasn't even actually Joe! He was all good things in a man, she was all good and true and honest to goodness things in a woman. I cannot wait for the world to read Hello Stranger and I really really can't wait to get my hands on a hard copy so I can annotate the heck out of it! (Katherine Center, feel free to send me one early if you feel so inclined ;) ) Thank you thank you for giving me the opportunity to read this one early!

“Isn’t it lucky that we’re drawn to people who can teach us things we need to learn?”

Hello Stranger was a bouquet of sunshine. In this book, Katherine Center thoughtfully handled a little known and often misunderstood condition, face blindness. Watching Sadie struggle made me so much more aware of people who deal with this condition on a daily basis. Reading truly does make us more empathetic people. Sadie’s eventual triumph and healing is all the sweeter in the end because of the struggle. This is a Romance, but like all of Katherine Center’s books, it gives you nuggets of wisdom for life in addition to a beautiful love story. I adored Hello Stranger, and I think you will, too.

I would Hello Stranger four starts! This was such a fun read and not your typical rom-com storyline. Sadie is an artist who hits a big break, but has a life-altering event happen. When she wakes in the hospital she's unable to recognize faces and this creates quite a few misunderstandings for her. As she starts to get feelings for her new vet her medical condition poses a problem. I would highly recommend this book and can't wait to read more from Katherine Center.
Read as an eARC on NetGalley.

Katherine Center is just nailing it, one after the other.

This is a super cute (even though I don't normally like love triangles) love triangle, and the humor, complexity, moments of every emotion under the sun really tie it all together.

What I loved;
🛼 Peanut
🛼 Character growth
🛼 The cutest romantic moments
🛼 Learning about Prosopagnosia

And one of my favorite pieces of the plot, that you learn quite quickly, is anytime with her terribly awful step sister and her almost as bad step mom. Something about those two really really made me want to punch them, and I think thats just beautiful.

Excellent read. This book follows Sadie and her success as a portrait artist. She also suffers from face blindness, which I don't think I've ever heard mentioned in a book before, let alone it is the main plot. Hello Stranger also has an excellent set of characters, including Sue and Joe. The love story is a lovely friends-to-lovers story and I don't want to give too much away about the plot twists and story aspects, but it really was a wholesome story.

5⭐️

What an absolutely delightful read! Katherine Center creates the most beautiful books inside and out. I mean those covers, could they be any more gorgeous!? This was one of my anticipated reads of 2023 and I was so excited for the opportunity to be an early reader.

I have adored all that I have read by Center thus far and this was another winner for me. It sounds ironic to say it considering the synopsis (which I never actually read btw) but I went into this one totally blind. ☺️

I loved it all! The beautifully written and unique story. The most lovable and relatable characters. Except of course for “poison” Parker. I haven’t hated a character that much in a long time, but even she was so well done. I have the ability to get caught up in a story and be blissfully ignorant of what other’s may easily see and or predict, and I did not see that twist coming. I literally yelled “OMG” when it all came full circle. This heartwarming, hug of a novel exceeded my expectations, and was exactly what I need and want in a romance read.

What I loved;
🛼 Sweet Romance
🛼 Character Growth
🛼 Love Triangle
🛼 Family Drama
🛼 Peanut
🛼 Learning about Prosopagnosia

Hello Stranger publishes 7/11/23! Pre-order, add your wishlist, and request from the library because you absolutely must read it!

Big thanks to NetGalley and St. Martins Press for the advanced copy in exchange for my honest review.

Swoon! This is exactly what I’ve come to expect from a Katherine Center book and it is everything! We watch Sadie take on an unexpected challenge that can potentially alter her life, while she continues to deal with the grief of losing her mother at a young age and the drama that followed when her father re-married. I admired how Sadie continued to spread kindness, even as her world turned upside down and others is her place would turn bitter. The romance doesn’t kick into until we’re further along in the story, but when it does your heart will melt. This is another favorite by Katherine Center and I can’t wait to own a physical copy once it’s released!

★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆ 3.5 stars

Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for the ARC of Hello Stranger by the amazing Katherine Center! I’ve read two of Katherine’s books prior to this (Things You Save in a Fire in 2021 and The Bodyguard in 2022) and absolutely loved loved them both! When I received an ARC of The Bodyguard, I couldn’t tear my eyes from the page. Suffice to say, I was more than a little excited to get my hands on an advanced copy of her latest novel.

I just so happened to have sat through a whole lecture covering Prosopagnosia in my Perception and Cognition course for my graduate program, so coming across this book on NetGalley a week later was perfect timing! I have long been fascinated with the disorder, so I was super excited to read a book in which the protagonist explores it from a first-person perspective. The fact that she also, like myself, loves drawing and painting was just another aspect that drew me toward the plot.

The plot on its own makes Hello Stranger a unique and compelling story. It covers a disorder that is so unfathomable to those who don’t live with it that you want to keep hearing more about Sadie’s experience. I enjoyed seeing how drastically Sadie’s outlook on life changed from the beginning of the story to the end. Definitely an uplifting epilogue if there ever was one.

That being said, there were a few aspects of the story I didn’t particularly like that dropped my rating, the first of which is how predictable it was. Without giving spoilers, I’d say the plot twist covers two things, one of which I didn’t expect and the other I knew had to be the case from the very beginning.

I was also disappointed in how much I genuinely disliked Sadie. I was taken aback by just how naïve and judgmental she was, as well as the wild accusations she threw left and right. Part of me understands why she may be this way given the information we get about what she went through in childhood with her step sister in addition to the trauma she was dealing with in the present. However, I couldn’t wrap my mind around how she got from point A to point B. When it was seemingly obvious to me as a reader what something or someone was referring to, Sadie found a way to ignore the obvious and paint the person in a negative light. For certain situations—like those regarding her stepsister—it made sense. For most, it was frustrating and confusing.

I am also personally not a fan of clichés. This story differs from Center’s other books (at least the two others I read) in that it follows a very basic romcom structure. The things characters said and the situations they were in were cliché and unrealistic, and you had a general idea of how it would end. Some people love stories that follow this structure. Since I usually don’t, it may have contributed to my “meh” opinion of the story.

But back to the positive! There were some parts I was genuinely invested in, and little surprises were thrown in along the way. I didn’t dislike this book, but I didn’t love it the way I expected. This by no means indicates that I am done with Katherine Center. She has written two of my 5-star reads—not to mention this book was by no means bad!—and I look forward to what she has in store next!

*Book Review*
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ - Emotional, Fascinating, Romantic, Tear-Jerking, Triumphant
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This is my first Katherine Center book and it did not disappoint! This story followed Sadie on an emotional rollercoaster as she tried to navigate life after getting a condition called face blindness. It was fascinating to learn about this condition and I’m so glad I got to that with a wonderful main character like Sadie. We see her develop new relationships, work through existing ones, and grow as a person overall. I really enjoyed this one and look forward to reading more books by Katherine Center. Hello Stranger comes out on July 11th!
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Thank you NetGalley and St. Martins Press for this ARC.
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Synopsis:
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.

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 in love―not with one man but two. The timing couldn’t be worse.

Making judgment calls on anything right now is a nightmare. If only her life were a little more in focus, Sadie might be able to have it all.

The story of Sadie Montgomery and how she finds success as a portrait artist is amazing and inventive. It is told through Sadie having face blindness which is something I’ve never heard of. The beautiful story is woven through a great supportive cast of BFF Sue and neighbor Joe who turns into her model for the big portrait contest Sadie has been accepted into and must complete a new portrait painting for the competition while figuring out how to complete with her face blindness. Then there are the Kims, Sue’s parents and apartment building owners, and Sadie’s dysfunctional family with her nemesis stepsister Parker leading the way and who you can dislike all you want, Lucinda the stepmom and dad. This love story really created fantastic anticipation. It’s my favorite friends to lovers trope. The way Katherine Center weaves the story of Sadie coping with her new, maybe temporary, normal and figuring out to see people’s faces is magical. Katherine brilliantly gives us these characters that have you asking yourself if Sadie actually sees who she sees or not. I found myself rereading portions of chapters to see if I had figured a few things out and when I had my “ah ha” moment I thought the story was even more magical! Thank you NetGallery for the ARC! This is another Katherine Center must read!

I loved this story about Sadie, a portrait artist who has face blindness following brain surgery. This was a funny read with a lot of depth. I really connected with the way Sadie wanted to feel close to her mom after her death. This was mixed in with a lot of humorous interactions she had with two men she met after her surgery, whose faces she could not recognize. It was interesting to read how Sadie adjusted to this challenge that affected every area of her life. She struggled to accept what was happening to her, but over time she found ways to cope and still enjoy her life. I did start to guess how it would turn out towards the end, but there were still a few details I hadn’t figured out. I really enjoyed reading this!