This is my second book by Katherine Center and I absolutely loved it. I plan to read more of her books!
Sadie is an artist who has to have brain surgery. After the surgery she realizes she cannot see faces. A possible issue with the surgery is face blindness and it can take time to correct itself. This is not good when she has to do a portrait for a big art show that she got accepted into. Sadie has to learn to deal with not being able to see people’s faces.
This was definitely a unique storyline that I really enjoyed. I will say the big twist at the end- I didn’t see it coming.
All around a great book that I would recommend to everyone!
Thank you NetGalley and the publisher for the ARC.

Thank you to the publisher, author, and NetGalley for an ARC of this book in return for my honest opinions.

Loved, loved, LOVED! Katherine always does such an eloquent job of balancing hard topics with laughter and uplifting moments. I caught myself several times smiling at the book and rooting for Sadie. I truly appreciate Katherine writing about topics that are hard but so real. A death of a parent is unimaginable but the non linear grieving process was so well demonstrated through her writing. I do wish that Sadie and her family relationships would have been dived into a bit more but then again no one has a romantic focused book about their family.

Hello Stranger follows the journey of Sadie, a portrait artist, living in a hovel on rooftop when she finds out she needs emergency brain surgery right before her art contest. The brain surgery causes a complication that doesn’t allow her to see the faces of people. During her recovery and prep for her submission the the contest she meets Joe in her apartment building and Dr. Addison, the vet for her dog, as she’s falling in love with them both she now needs to make the tough decision of who she’s going to let down and who she’s going to chose to pursue further.

Some trigger warnings: cheating, death of a parent, grief, family trauma, brain surgery, childhood bullying.

One of my favorite books in 2022 was Center’s The Bodyguard. So when this book was posted on NetGalley I had to request it. Normally I wait until closer to release dates to read, but with this one I couldn’t wait until it’s release in July.

I was not disappointed-it was perfect. The book follows a woman who is literally a starving artist looking for her big break. When that break is within reach, she has a medical accident which leads to face blindness. The story is so beautifully written with characters that I felt so deeply for.

This one need to be put on your TBR right now!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️/5

When I found out this treasure was available on NetGalley, I literally stopped everything and requested it. I am SO glad that I did! Katherine Center's writing is not super exciting, super spicy or adventurous, but she has a quiet way of writing a COMFORT read that creeps up on me and onto my favorites list. Not to say that all of her books are 5☆ for me, but the ones that are... **chef's kiss** Her emotions that are woven into each character hit just the right note of sweet, not spicy to not be too "fluffy."

Although I was able to guess the plot twist, the “anticipation” of what would happen, delivered all I wanted and more! I highly recommend reading the extra excerpt from the author - very enlightening!

Hello Stranger was a solid four stars for me. I started reading Katherine Center's books about a year ago and there honestly hasn't been one that I haven't enjoyed. They are quick reads that I finish usually in a weekend. And I love how she can take heavy topics and still make the reader feel hopeful. Hello Stranger dealt with some serious stuff (emotional abuse, parental death, medical fragility, etc) but it never felt like a downer. I loved the narrator and it was interesting to learn about face blindness. I really enjoyed the romance too. Some downsides was the family drama was a little over the top and there was definitely predictability with the love interest. Didn't love as much as Things We Save and Bodyguard but still a great book.

"Every real human interaction is made up of a million tiny moving pieces. Not a simple one-note situation: a symphony of cues to read and decipher and evaluate and pay attention to."

The anticipation of hope, the laugh-out-loud moments, the neighbor, the vet, the evil step-sister, the not-as-evil-as-you-thought step-mother--and so much more, kept me reading Katherine Center's, Hello Stranger, non-stop. I've been a big fan of Center's novels for several years now, and this one is now at the top of my list of favorites!

Thank you, NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press, for sharing this digital reviewer copy with me in exchange for my honest thoughts.

Katherine Center delivers another great, well rounded novel. I loved the storyline so much; it was funny, sweet, sad and romantic. The main character Sadie is an artist, but gets into an accident where she now has facial blindness. While dealing with all the medical problems, Sadie has an awful step sister and a distant father. I really loved this storyline from start to finish, Sadie was an amazing main character and I absolutely loved this book. It's a story of resilience and following your dreams. I would defiantly recommend this book to anyone wanting a sweet romance. Thanks to NetGalley for the ARC and to the publisher, I highly recommend this one!

Katherine Center does it again!

Hello Stranger is her next novel and lemme just say: It is super duper cute and gives you all the good feels!

Sadie is a portrait artist who is living the quintessential life of a starving artist. She finally gets her big break when she becomes a finalist for a prestigious portrait competition. But, as the universe would have it, Sadie finds herself blacking out on the street and getting saved by a Good Samaritan. When she wakes up in her hospital bed, she discovers that she needs brain surgery. However, this surgery results in Sadie developing a condition called (acquired) Prosopagnosia, or face blindness. The portrait competition is only weeks away, but Sadia’s condition prevents her from understanding and painting faces. Also, to complicate matters, she starts falling in love with two faceless men!

On a personal matter, I thought the premise of the book focused around face blindness was so interesting! My husband is partially blind and so stories with different types of blindness or visual impairment always hit a little close to home for me. I appreciated that Center highlighted this condition and made me aware of it. (I definitely went down the Google bunny hole.)

Overall: This book is a fast, clean read. Center’s writing is neat and easy to follow. The storyline is fun, silly, and romantic!
.Did I read this in one sitting? Yes, I did.
.Was it as enjoyable and cute as I expected? Yes, it was.
.Did it kind of remind me of a Korean drama? Yup! And it made me love it all the more for that! (On a side note, Sadie’s bestie is Korean-American. Hehe)
.Did I bust out my watercolors right after finishing this book? You betcha!

After reading The Bodyguard, I was super excited to be chosen to review an ARC of Katherine Center’s latest book, Hello Stranger! Thank you for letting me read this ARC! :)

Sadie is a portrait artist who just got accepted as a finalist in a big competition with the final original painting due in 6 weeks. Then she finds out she needs supposedly minor brain surgery. When she wakes up from the surgery, she finds out she cannot see faces, which is a big deal for a portrait artist. Sadie meets a neighbor in her building who helps her at convenient times. She also meets the nice veterinarian who helps when her beloved dog becomes suddenly sick. Which guy will she choose, and will she be able to paint a portrait when she can't see faces, including the ones she's painted?

This was not my favorite of this author's books. You really have to buy into the idea that someone can't see any faces, but can still see parts of the face. Also, the step sister wasn't fully fleshed out as a character. Sadie spent a lot of time hating her, reasonably, but I never understood why the parents always took the stepsister's side when they were young.

That said, the banter was enjoyable, the mistakes were romance-novel believable, and the ending was what I wanted. Buy into the face blindness 100% and it's an enjoyable book.

Thank you netgalley for the ARC

Hmm - this is an interesting one. In my mind, Katherine Center can do absolutely no wrong. I read The Bodyguard twice in about four months because I loved it that much. But something was just a little hmm about Hello Stranger.
Plz don't misunderstand - the topic of this book and the medical issue that the main character, Sadie, suffers from really early on in the story was very, very interesting. However, it led to Sadie being, for me, too much of an unreliable narrator [albeit through no fault of her own]. I don't want to give away too much, especially as I left this book feeling a lot of empathy for those with this condition. But it was extremely disjointing to not trust a lot of her interactions with people or feel a strong sense of connection with them [which may just be a mark of a great writer, as that's absolutely what Sadie was experiencing herself, so perhaps joke's on me and Katherine Center continues to do no wrong!! Mea culpa!!!] Despite all of that, I loved Sadie and Joe and felt all the feels with Peanut - but don't get me started on dogs eating people food - travesty!!!! I also found all of the Kims adorable and wonderful and loved them.

Sadie's family was also a bit too flat for me as well. Parker was an absolute demon, and I thought Lucinda could have been fleshed out a lot more to leave us having hope for a redeemed relationship Sadie's dad was pretty unforgivable at times, and I didn't totally believe his arc that felt rushed at the end of the story.

Despite all the grows, I still think this deserves a lot of credit for tackling a tough topic with humor and tenderness. 4 stars for a sturdy story that I think I'll enjoy a lot more the second time around. Thanks to NetGalley for an advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review!

I thoroughly enjoyed reading all about Sadie and the woes of her everyday life. Her change encounter with Joe was one of my favorite meet cutes this year!

I read this book in two days and it might be my new favorite Katherine Center novel. The character development was awesome and I loved the addition of the unreliable narrator. The romance was super cute and not overdone and the twists made me love it even more.

Sadie Montgomery is a struggling artist. Like a lot of artists, she has been struggling for years. With a disapproving father, who is a rock star in his own field, she has come up short of his expectations so it is easier to avoid talking to him.

Things are turning around for her when she lands a spot as a finalist in a prestigious portrait competition. Finally, something that her father can maybe be proud of her for doing.

But it seemed as if Sadie has a black cloud following her around! Coming on the heels of her finalist news, she finds out she has a brain issue and needs to have surgery. She is not trying to do that. Her mother died young and Sadie wants her time to shine in the contest.

Her father, a famous surgeon, talks her into the surgery and when she wakes, she can’t read faces. Everything else is fine. She can see her dog just fine, but no one else. And when said dog is ill, she meets the Vet. Something is going on there, but will it last?

I have heard of face blindness, but this is the first fiction I have read with a main character suffering from it. And I can’t imagine waking up to that!

This author is so well-loved. And it is because her books are so real. Not fairy tale fluff, real people in real situations that you just get. Always a pleasure!

NetGalley/July 11, 2023, St. Martin’s Press

Hello Stranger was a fun romance novel. The main character is an artist who needs to have brain surgery. After the surgery her brain has swelling which affects her ability to see faces. She needs to navigate life and art while having face blindness.
I really enjoyed my time while read this book, however it often got quite silly! The entire storyline between the main character and her stepsister seemed so juvenile and over the top. Also so much of the love story felt overly predictable. Even with knowing what would happen it was still fun to read and see the final resolution. It just felt a little cheesy at points.

Thanks to Netgally for sending me an advanced copy of this ebook!

This is the first book from the author that I've read. I've heard so many great things about the author, so I have a ton of TBR books by her on my list. The cover and the title really drew me in, I love the bold colors and the title was interesting.
I really liked this book, there's a bunch of meet cute moments, and rom-com moments which I love. Then there's the cute dog, come'on now - who doesn't love a cute dog. Now the step-sister, I really loved to hate the step sister and I'm sure everyone will at some point, but I did from the beginning.
The end was great. It made everything come together. I would definitely recommend this to friends and family as a book to pre order and look out for.

This was such a wonderful book--easy-to-read and funny, with an enjoyable, closed-door romantic plot. Sadie is an artist, preparing for a prestigious art competition, when she has emergency brain surgery and loses her ability to see faces. Her portrait painting grinds to a halt, since her face blindess makes it impossible to render realistic depictions of her subjects. Luckily, Sadie is distracted by her handsome neighbor, Joe, and her beloved dog's dreamy vet, Dr. Addison. I kept turning the pages to find out which guy Sadie would end up with and if her ability to see faces would return. Highly recommended for fans of feel-good books! Thanks to NetGalley, St. Martin's Press, and the author for the librarian preview copy--I will definitely be purchasing this one for our library.

I devoured this one! Katherine Center is becoming one of my favorite authors. Hello Stranger did not disappoint.

Another winner from Katherine Center! This one deals with the topic of facial blindness and while I've seen this in some thrillers as of late, this was the first time I saw it in romance/women's fiction and I appreciated it as a plot point.

While I love Center and her work and I did love Hello Stranger, there was a plot point that truly screamed JUST COMMUNICATE that I found a bit frustrating - for that reason, this one ended up being a 4 star for me rather than a 5 - which is still a really high rating.

This was a sweet read, cozy and quick for a winter weekend, but not as tightly written as some of Center's others. I had to hold back from screaming at the book for certain questions or inconsistencies and also for the inclusion of some extraneous, unnecessary characters that weren't believable (her bestie kinda sucked, right?) or kind of unnecessary (Hello, Parker). BUT, for puppies, and art, and redemption, and love...I'll still probably read anything Center writes. If you don't read it too closely, it's a satisfying palate cleanser.

Katherine Center has not let me down yet!! I absolutely fell in love with her book The bodyguard and couldn’t wait to read Hello Stranger and AHHH it was amazing!!

The plot had me laughing out loud and this author knows how to create the most relatable characters that you completely fall in love with.

Read if you love:
♡︎ love triangles that are so good
♡︎ unique plot
♡︎ Family dynamics and drama
♡︎ adorable romances