Enjoyable! Lots of twists and turns through this slow burn. The lack of communication between the main characters was frustrating sometimes, but overall a good read!

I enjoyed reading about Sadie’s unexpected challenging personal journey and how she managed to adapt. It was an emotional and inspiring journey. I admired her perseverance and resilience. And of course, the endearing love story that is not without a twist. This book was light and heartwarming despite the depth of the content, as is all of Katherine Center’s books. Another amazing read by this author.

You can not go wrong with Katherine. She writes sweet romances that will stay with you for a while.

The character development was fantastic and the story felt so real. Very much enjoyed.

this was a mixed bag for me generally. liked some parts of the story especially the growth with her family and her confidence.

I’m of the firm opinion that the reader’s state of mind affects their enjoyment of a book. So in this context, I think I need to re-read this book at some other time and re-assess my reaction. At the moment, I felt that this book was more depressing than funny. There were some brilliant parts, a few moments in which I felt the humor, but for me it was mostly sad.

I saw Sadie as a woman failing at her life and her career. She was stubbornly clinging to the “I’m fine” fantasy, in spite of having a ruined relation with her father, a not very successful career in art portraiture, living in a crappy studio on the roof of a building, and with more debts than income. She wasn’t all that cheerful, she was just faking it as best she could, and most of the time I thought she was too deluded, mired in fantasy. And she only had one friend, Sue, with Sue’s very kind parents, owners of the building, who allowed her to live in the rooftop.

Then on top of all those issues, Sadie developed a neurological disfunction that affected how she related to persons. There’s a lot of confusions and miscommunications that happen that could read like a comedy, but I didn’t get that feeling. The author’s excessive blabbing, explaining ad nauseam about the prosopagnosia condition made reading a little tedious. After I finished the book, the theme was incredibly interesting but it needed to be a tighter portion of the book and let the character’s dialogue handle the information rather than give us such long explanations.

There’s a huge plot-twist towards the end that brought a lot of factors in the book into comical relief, and this is where I finally felt like I was reading this author’s usual writing style.

This is very sad because I have loved this author’s previous books. Even though I liked the characters in this story, I found it was more depressing than fun, and it beats the purpose of why I chose this book. Usually the character is going through a bad patch but there are extenuating circumstances, like lovely family, lovely friends, but Sadie’s problems seem to be compounding all the time, not resolving, and she had a toxic family that didn’t seem to get better. Then we got a fast solution on the epilogue.

I absolutely adore this book and Katherine Center! As a psychologist with a neuropsych background, I am always a harsher rater when people are writing about mental health and brain-related topics because I hope the author has done their research and accurately portrays these aspects of health. She did an amazing job describing the experience of someone with acquired prosopagnosia (face blindness).

Overall, this book had GREAT character development and I enjoyed the plot. When faced with a difficult romantic situation between two men, Sadie did not lead both guys on to her benefit, but straight up communicated that she has feelings for someone else. The communication in this book is on another level!

Katherine Center is an auto-buy author for me <3

I received a free ARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

I loved this book. The characters were so good. The plot moved along well with several pleasant surprises. I like the way Center tells a story like you’re talking to your best friend. Face blindness has been used in several books,, usually thrillers. So, this was a refreshing take on it. Also, the author’s note at the end was fantastic.

This was my first Katherine Center book and it was very cute. I know she loves happily ever afters and I loved that too in this book. She brought a lot of personality and character into the female lead Sadie and I really enjoyed that. I was expecting more romance in this book. I knew it would be "closed door", but there really wasn't much of any type of romance going on except for the two kissing scenes, and I just personally prefer more than that in my favorite romance novels. Overall a very cute story. I would recommend this book to others with the right expectations, and I would/will read more from Katherine Center. I plan to post a review of this book to @_amy_reads_ on instagram on Wednesday, September 20th.

Katherine Center is back and love isn't blind....just a bit blurry:

Sadie has been on her own for a while now, trying to find her place in the world after the death of her mother when she was a teenager and her father bringing in a stepmother and sister into her life, who made her life a living hell. But things seem to be changing when she is announced as one of the top 10 finalists in a portrait competition. She decided to celebrate and everything changes. She gets diagnosed with face blindness, not something you want to hear when you're a portrait artist and now have a competition coming up. Sadie cannot even see her won face. As she struggles to scope she seems to meet two men, who could not be different from the other, but she feels drawn to both of them even though she has no idea what they look like. Could love really be blurry?

Alright here me out, I both enjoyed and disliked this book at the same time. Firstly, I loved the concept of this book and the idea of Face blindness is one that I have not heard about before and seems slightly terrifying at that, especially in the way that Sadie got it. But man was I not a fan of Sadie most of the time. I found her irritating, immature, and just wanting to punch her at times. I know mean but god just have a simple conversation about the face blindness especially when her and Joe really became more serious. I think that Said was portray younger than her 29 years, I mean she had insta-love with a man she could not see and then created a fantasy in her head about them getting married after one meeting. Just a bit too hard for me to believe a 29 year old would think that way. But I will say once I got to the 80% mark really got me and i was feeling all the emotions.

I liked that this book even had a bad girl, an arch nemesis, if you will for Sadie who is destined to destroy everything positive that she has going in her life. I found it heartbreaking and comical at times the length that her "evil step-sister" would take in order to make Sadie's life a living hell. Anyone else feel a spin off book here for Parker, i feel like that would be a character arc of the century.

To put things simply Joe is just a delightful golden retriever who is simply amazing.

This book tried to have some mystery thrown in on it, or at least I think it tried to with the whole love triangle between Sadie, Joe and the Dr. but i personally thought it was pretty obvious so that why i said Tried. I mean how does a reader not make the connection and then we are stuck waiting for Sadie to figure it out.

So overall just okay for me as I loved the face blindness aspect, evil step-sister and Joe but I just could not love the main character.

Enjoy!!!!

Such a great book. SO amazing. katherine center cant do any wrong. Face blindness was a unquie storyline

I enjoyed this book, but was only able to give it three stars because there was a suicide sub plot that came up in the story a couple of times that I did not think was handled well. It felt thrown in there as another (unnecessary example) that Sadie's stepsister Parker was an awful person, and it I felt it wasn't given the weight that such a topic deserved. It was brushed over in light, airy way to match the tone of the rest of the book, so I'm not sure why it was included. I don't think it was needed to characterize Parker since there were so many other scenes that did that successfully. Besides the stepsister, who never redeemed herself, I did enjoy most of the other characters. The story was cute, if not a little unbelievable that Sadie was so oblivious to Joe's identity. Not my favorite of this author, but The Bodyguard is hard to beat.

So there’s a scene in this book where a man is making a bunch of overtly fat-phobic and body shaming comments that appear to be about a woman he had a one-night stand with. Later, he claims he was talking about a dog. Whatever is true, it’s gross and so unnecessary. Why is this even in the book? Anyway, the book is fine buts it’s by no means great, and this makes it a miss for me. Additionally, I would give CWs for grappling with past death of a parent (mom) and seriously strained relationship with a parent (dad).

I know a lot of people loved Center Stage but it didn't hit me as hard as this one did. I really thought the face blindedness aspect added an interesting twist. And I felt empathetic toward this as I had a medical treatment once that caused a similar effect but only for 48 hours. It was enough for me to be super frustrated and also appreciate something so "overlooked" such as distinguising between facial features. Anyway, I really liked this book and I thought it was a nice balance of "easy read" and "so much more"! :)

An all around feel good, heart warming novel. Center had me laughing at loud numerous times throughout the book. You can’t help but fall in love with Center’s story and characters!!

Thank you netgalley and st. Martins for providing me with an earc!

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and NetGalley for giving me the opportunity to read an advanced copy of this poignant novel about an artist facing face blindness. She made it to the National Portrait Contest finals. Her father is a doctor. Her mother died and her father remarried. She has a stepmother and a stepsister. Shades of Cinderella here.

She has a seizure and is almost run down by a VW Bettle when she is rescued by a Good Samitarian. she is taken to the hospital where they do a MRi. They discover something in the brain that makes it necessary for her to have brain surgery.

After brain surgery, Sadie has to deal with new challenges.

This novel is about family relationships and how she deals with face blindness.

This is a wonderful story. The characters are realistic. I loved the Afterword by the author about Romance novels.

I was really excited to read this! I’ve read two of Katherine Center’s novels, and loved both, but this one fell a little flat for me.

There was a lot going on for a rom com. Family drama, pet drama, medical drama. I feel like Sadie had so much happen to her and even when she was sad and heartbroken she still just seemed to be fine? Like her step sister RUINED her life and did some really HORRENDOUS things, and even in adulthood this crazy step sister is moving into her building and while there’s somewhat of a blowout in the end it all sort of leads to nothing really other than Sadie and her dad somewhat start to repair their relationship? And Parker just…moved to Amsterdam 😂. And the step mother just wasn’t so evil anymore.

I started to suspect what was going to happen with the romance thread, and when it was confirmed in the end I immediately started trying to poke holes in the miscommunication. The biggest one being Oliver never texted her back, but Joe did. How did she not realize they were the same number? Like if she had Oliver’s number first and then Joe texted her, it would show up Oliver on her phone, correct?

And I feel like with the last few scenes the author is REALLY trying to justify how this all happened, which makes it more obvious that maybe it didn’t make sense and the editor was like we need to clear this up 😂.

Also the dog disappears halfway into the novel after the drama in the beginning and it all just felt disjointed, with these random things happening to try and make the main plot work and once they fulfilled their purpose they fell off the storyline. Which is a bummer cause I really loved this author’s other books.

Overall this was just fine if you don’t think about the details too much. It’s a romcom and it’s fluffy and cute, but it had these dark elements that really should impact the character more and they just sort of don’t? Or maybe it was the audiobook narrator just being really bubbly sounding all the time.

Not my fave Katherine Center novel, but a quick read.

3.5 ⭐️

Thank you @netgalley and @stmartinspress for sending this book for review consideration. All opinions are my own.

I loved this book, such a sweet story, laugh out loud funny at times. I loved, Sadie, Peanut and all the side characters, minus Parker, she is the worst! Definitely recommend!

This book was adorable! The love story is sweet and swoony. Katherine Center can do no wrong with her romantic comedies! I love them all, and Hello Stranger is no exception. This was a quick fun read for anyone who needs something light and funny and cute in their life right now.

Not my favorite Katherine Center but still delivers the comfort and joy I've come to expect from her. I think the plot was a little overwrought but I still enjoyed the ride!

This is the kind of book where I'm glad I decided to keep reading and not DNF. Because while the beginning was rough, I ended up enjoying the story by the end.

My main complaints with this though is that the main character was kind of insufferable at the beginning, and also, the "villain" of the story was very one-dimensional and didn't add much to the overall story.